The Mirror’s perennial popularity contest Best of Montreal, in which all the local blogs whore themselves out to their readers for votes, has been released. Among the highlights:

• Love her or hate her, Celine Dion is still popular. She made the lists for Montrealer closest to sainthood, Montrealer closest to hell, most desirable woman (#1! WTF?) and tackiest personality.
• Gerald Tremblay beat out both Karla Homolka and Kimveer Gill in the most-hated list. Ouch.
• William Shatner proves that you can be old, fat and badly act out the part of an idiot on TV but still be one of the most desirable men in your hometown.
• Samer Elatrash, once one of Montreal’s loudest activists, has disappeared from that list now that he’s a writer for the Mirror.
• Tarah Schwartz’s name is misspelled, despite coming in fourth in “best local newscaster” among a sea of CFCF names.
• Geeta Nadkarni, that girl doing the weather on CBC with the infectious Indian accent, has rocketed to the top of the TV personality list on her first attempt. The Mirror has a profile (bottom of the page).
• Dollard is the 15th best neighbourhood. Go West Island! Sadly, Pierrefonds is nowhere to be seen. Neither is “the bus terminus at Fairview”.
• The Mirror doesn’t realize that Comedy Works and “the place above Jimbo’s” are the same thing. I don’t blame them though, the lack of comedy places in this city means the category needs to be inflated to reach 10.
• Zeke’s Gallery got best gallery but nowhere on the best blog list by sending out an entire list of suggestions for votes (to discourage ballot-stuffing, the Mirror required people to fill out a minimum number of categories).
• The Mirror won best newspaper (duh). The Gazette came in second. The Link, once again, is the only student newspaper on the list.
• Drunken Stepfather won for best blog. Yeah, I’d never heard of it either. And it has nothing to do with the city. But hey, if you’re up for pictures of celebrities scratching their asses, I guess it’s ok. Midnight Poutine deservedly came in second, followed by Montreal City Weblog. The rest seems to be filled with ballot stuffers, though it’s nice to see newcomer MTL Street on there as well.
• Fagstein is nowhere to be seen, when clearly I would have fit into everything from best blog to most desirable man. Someone miscounted somewhere.
• “Stealing your neighbour’s wireless” was disqualified as Best ISP.