Writing Wrongs

The weekend was mostly spent staying up too late, sleeping too late and attending the local filk con Consonance.

First of all, I have to say that Seanan McGuire was brilliant and a half as toastmaster. She is smart as a whip, twice as quick, and COMMANDS a room. I am sorry I missed her Friday concert, in which pretty much every well-known filker on the planet participated, from what they tell me. But I've seen that before, so it was a sacrifice I was willing to make to attend BarBot, which I had not seen before.

I mostly went for the concerts, which were kind of sparse this year, or seemed so to me. They started well with Tim Griffin, who writes and sings mostly things for the grade school classes he teaches, and they are fun and he has a flair for understated showmanship. Check out his web site, where all his tunes can be played all the way through. I especially like this album: The Da Vinci Chord and identified with Leonardo's Mother and loved Lunch Lady. Next up was Brooke Lunderville, who sang mostly new stuff, and some covers I did not recognize. She did end with The Wreck of the Crash, which almost everyone in filk knows by now. As always, she added lots of laughs with her between-song banter.

Next were Two-fers. I ducked out to the con suite for a while and missed a couple. The con suite continues the tradition of being the best stocked and maintained con suite in condom. Wait - there must be a better word than that!

Next concert was Interfilk guests Partners in K'Rhyme aka W. Randy Hoffman &  Kira Heston. They abandoned their usual a Capella funny songs to concentrate on a lot of ose numbers so they could co-opt the services of the many available instrumentalists (one at a time, mostly) to accompany them. I would rather have heard their usual presentation. The Interfilk auction was kind of sparse this time around, and mostly consisted of CDs and DVDs recorded at filk cons, which all went for >$100. There was less wenching than usual, bidding went too quickly. There was no chocolate. :-(

For dinner I went next door to Nijo Castle. It was way early (5:30) and I was brought to a table all the way at the back. At first the service was fast, but then a family group of about 20 took the row of tables between me and the kitchen, and from then on I was abandoned. I was impressed at how well they served the big group, though. But 15 minutes to wait for someone to notice I was done eating and another 20 minutes from ordering dessert to receiving it - from a busboy, who also kindly refilled my iced tea which had been empty half an hour before. I had the sashimi/tempura combo. Sashimi was cut too thick, and one of the pieces of tuna was full of gristle. The tempura was fine, as was the salad, and the miso soup, which was served in a cup designed to look like a little barrel.

10% tip was generous, if I go there again it will be with a group.

Back to the con, WTF concert of the evening by a group called Tell Yer Ma.  They did some zombie numbers. There was some humor there. But it was hillbilly washboard stuff, not a match for a filk con.

Highlight of the evening I expected to be the GOH concert, all four of the 3 Weird Sisters. I ♥ their newest/youngest member Mary Crowell, so I had high expectations. Also, phenom harpist Gwen Knighton had come from England, and I ♥ her playing as well. There was a lot of sibling banter, some of which was ROFL worthy. A few of the songs were amusing, but for the most part they concentrated on tight harmonies, and it got old for me. Oppressive. There is only so much of that I can take. I know some folks can wallow in it forever, and I know it's a skill requiring a lot of rehearsal. But so does Wagner's Ring cycle.

They also invited in fiddler Amy McNally, who played in almost everyone's concert. That got old too.

The sound check ran long, and the concert ran longer. I'm very surprised that Kristoph was not as organized this year as usual, he did not have his wires labeled and kept plugging guitars into a busted port on his ancient Mackie mixer. Unlike Conflikt's audio staff, he and johno had most of the sets up and running in minutes. Irony here - the couple who run Conflikt's audio, which had a similar sound check last for 90 minutes, were at the con, but I kept running into them outside the concert hall. They could have learned a few things by  watching from the front row. They are the sweetest people in the world, I really would like them to do an award-worthy job.

Kristoph played some hilarious special effects games with Toastmaster Seanan. She rolled with it superbly. Love it!

I was filked out, so I went home and dumped the photos onto the PC and converted them to jpegs.

Slept in again, got there in time for  Stich & Yammer with Gwen Knighton but did not see Gwen there, and they had shifted from the nice ballroom across the lobby from the main con to a nook in front of the restrooms by the emergency exit near the main ballroom. It made for some good WTF photography. At the same time in the ballroom was English Country Dance, but only the leader and two others attended.

Concerts started at 1 with Bill Roper whom I had seen a couple of times solo and with his wife. This time he had Amy joining him. I would rather have heard him solo for most of the numbers. Amy is an excellent improviser, and was the new toy of the con performers. I admire her skill, but since I am also great at picking up tunes I haven't heard before, I'm not all that impressed. It's called "playing by ear",  and IMHO is a heck of a lot easier than playing from sheet music. Trouble is I only improvise well enough on brass instruments, which was not in high demand on filk stages. And I can't sing while I play them. Amy doesn't sing along either, come to think of it.

Next up was Instaband, which normally is two or three bands chosen from names picked out of a hat. This time there were only enough names for one band. Cute song by figmo, sung by Nick and Bill, who needed a lot more practice.

Twofers followed, with Jeff & Maya Bohnhoff + Vixy doing one humorous and one ose song, Kathleen Sloan sang something which I have forgotten and then her own tune Box of Fairies which was based on the liner notes from Gwen Knighton's CD of the same name. It made me cry, and totally broke Gwen. Last one up was Kitty Crowe and her autoharp.

That was the end of official Consonance concerts, next was rock jam, which hurt my ears the last 2 times I stayed for it. Janice wanted to get together at 4:30 on the other side of the Bay, so I bailed and joined her for an hour.

Home, dumped and processed the con photos, interrupted by a low Hgl moment which prompted dinner. Domino camped out on the arm of the chair, but would not eat anything I gave her from my plate. Eggs & toast.

Photos are in two sets: ( Behind the cut )

Plans for tomorrow:
Work. 9 am team meeting
BASFA? Maybe.

Woke up after 10. This is a very comfortable hotel - I'm sleeping longer and deeper than I am at home, and with more structured dreams. Though I can't remember any details.
When I tried to charge a couple of Cokes to my room, the front desk said there was no one in that room. They would not listen to me about the two reservations, and we had quite a 3 Stooges thing going with two desk clerks and a trainee, before one of them figured out that I was  supposed to have been given paperwork for the 2nd reservation to sign. It took about 15 minutes.

I caught Anne's concert, a few minutes late, I think she did one number with the harp which I missed, the rest was on guitar. She's always enjoyable.

Then up to the top floor for the luncheon. In theory they had sold out, but there were several empty seats - two at my table. We had Bill & Carole & Harold & filkerferenghi & Neil & lemmozine. The food did not impress me, except for the cheesecake.

We were given a stupid phrase and an unrelated word for the seeds of our instafilk song. I was uninspired. Bill & Lem had something going but it did not click for me. Carole wrote her own, which was pretty close to what I had in mind. Then only thing I could see doing with the stupid phrase was make it into a chant refrain, which is what she did.

There were a lot of good entries, a lot of it had to do with the luck of the draw of seed words. Every table had enough talent.

Twofers, which I love to go to, only got one sign-up, because they had it opposite Tony & Vixy. It could easily have been moved up an hour when T&V sound check was going on. T&V did an excellent concert as usual, but I was disappointed they did not play emerald green.

Riverfolk was next, and contrary to what their name sounded like, they did an all-filk set. I loved what they did with Popsicle Girl. The sign language signers were a total hoot in that one. Interfilk auction, as usual, went higher than I wanted to pay for everything, but that's good, they need the money, Unlike the BASFA auction, Interfilk bidders bid high to help fund the operation.

I wasn't going to the songbook singalong, which gave me time to take light rail to Othello Street for dinner. Unfortunately the one and only Chinese place was closed for a private party. I stopped in at Safeway for cough drops and donettes, then found an upstairs Pho place, which had a really good #8. $7 for dinner. $4.50 rail fare.

Back to the hotel in time for Talis Kimberly, except that something was seriously wrong with the sound system, or so they told us, and it started more than an hour late. Not cool.

I had never heard Talis in person, but had heard many covers of her songs. In person she is a perky, energetic performer, but I didn't understand hardly any of her songs. I hear the words, they don't make sense to me. It happens, especially when the writer is a fan of some book series I'm not interested in.

Toastmonster hsifyppah killed. It was so good to have her awesomeness there again. She had a lot of new material, and closed with what is already a filk classic. She did not do my favorite song of hers, but I wouldn't have either, under the circumstances. It was really neat when she called her mother-in-law (stand-up bass) and father-in-law (guitar) up on stage.

I wasn't sure if I would like the GoH concert by Brenda & Bill Sutton, so I went to my room and pulled it up on streaming. There were enough buffer under-runs to make that not enjoyable so I went back to the concert room and listened. They did more filk than I expected, but much of it was heavy. Not my favorite music, but they are good musicians.

I think I'll go down to open filking for a little while.

Plans for tomorrow:
Breakfast at the hotel
Two-fers II if I'm fed in time (10)
Song writing contest
Lunch break maybe at the con suite, or maybe hike up to 7-11 (and use the cash machine)
Concerts/panels as the mood strikes
Band scramble
farewell jam
sharps & flats
supper - Maybe go downtown again.

I had misread the programming guide and some FB and LJ notes about the con which had me believing pre-filking started last night and the con started sometime in the morning, maybe 10-ish. Boy was I wrong.

Meet & greet was listed a starting at 2, opening ceremonies at 7. There was nothing which said when registration would open.

Spent a lot of time watching TV coverage of the unpleasantness in Egypt. All the stations were playing pretty much the same images of things on fire at night, and isolated pieces of men jumping on tanks, APCs, motorcycles and each other. Many of them were looking self-consciously at the camera, sort of posing, guiltily. During all this, no one mentioned that Mubarak came to power when his minions assassinated Anwar Sadat, who had just made peace with Israel.

Finally got my badge & program guide. Walked half a block to Denny's for a late lunch, service was lightning fast. The food was edible. I left a big tip.

Back at the hotel lemmozine and Kathy Mar were there hanging out, after a little chatting I went to my room, got the Interfilk donations out and brought them upstairs to sign them in, then took some Hawaii uke trinkets down to lemmozine and chatted some more.

 Hung out in the room some more, then went back upstairs and waited for the opening ceremony to begin. A little before time, GoH Dr Mary Crowell walked in looking stunning in a cobalt blue dress. Or at least I think that color is cobalt blue. Or maybe lightning bolt blue. Love that color, and that color loves her too. Photos when I get home. She even chatted with me for a while, remembered my review of her at a previous Consonance. I thought it might have been Conflikt too, but she said this was her first one.

The con was opened by chairperson Beth Runnerwolf, who spent entirely too long on con minutiae before delivering a moving and tearful homage to a person who had been near and dear to her mother and her, and had recently passed away. It was a difficult speech to give, but touching and inspiring.

Audio WTF - Beth ended up speaking from the keyboard bench because the main mike kept cutting out, and the audio folks kept trying to blame it on her not speaking into it. But she had been. Tonight there was a lot of speaking into mikes which had not been turned on until the speaker was well into his/her first sentence.

Time to move on, Toastmaster Mark Osier on guitar and Mary on keyboard led us through a practice run and then a final take of Leslie Fish's Hope Eyrie for the con CD. The song chokes me up for the wrong reason. When it was written in 1975 it was a prediction that the moon landing was the first step for humans out of the the earth's gravity well. Today the opposite of that prediction has come about, and public opinion sees the whole thing as a waste. I'm not sure if anyone else in the room shares my view on this.

Concerts next. Interfilk guest Ben Newman. Annoyingly nasal voice, mostly listenable material, joined for the last few numbers by Callie on her bass flute.

Steve Dixon. Beautiful voice, tuneful songs with lyrics worth listening to (some were covers), pleasant guitar style. Unfortunately I was distracted by rude conversations at the side of the room by people Who Know Better™. And dancing. Both Ben and Steve's every number were danced to in the area between my seat and the windows by a couple who obviously love each other and express it through awkward dance not appropriate to the music.

Cecelia Eng. I first heard her in a filk circle at a Rustycon, I think, and am always blown away by her amazing singing, enunciation, and clever lyrics. And for me, the total disconnect between how she looks and how her voice sounds. Small package, huge voice.

Did not go to open filk after, needed to get some toiletries and such at 7-11 which is UP a steep hill a very long block from the hotel. Not a good con hotel - the restaurant is open very short hours, the bar even shorter. There are only three restaurants in easy walking distance, one is a Denny's, one is a run-down teriyaki shack, the other is very pricey.

Back at the room, ate some of the 7-11 food, wrote this.

Plans for tomorrow:
Con Brunch at 10. Too early for a brunch, but whatever. Looking forward to that, it's usually fun.
May go to the home recording session, if it happens. Was supposed to be co-presented by Alec Adams and Tony Fabris, but Tony is away on a family emergency.
Looking forward to the Interfilk auction. I don't think my Howeird's Grossest Hits CD is worth what people are bidding for it, but Interfilk is worth it, so I won't complain.
Dinner with lemmozine, I hope.
Concerts by Mark and by Mary. Not sure if I'll go to Alec's concert, there is only so much manic fiddling I can absorb in one lifetime.

Mostly. Last night I labeled all 16 400-foot reels of 8mm film my Dad took between 1956 and 1968, preparatory to having them put onto DVDs. This morning on my way to the annual eye-blur exam (aka ophthalmologist appointment) I put the first two reels in the trunk of the car, along with the Chinese ad for bridget_coila's recommended herbal remedy, and a piece of Black Forest cake. The banana I kept in the front seat to eat on the way. The day starts with a good, healthy breakfast, you know.

Traffic was too stupid to eat and drive, but I was parked at KP 15 minutes early, so I ate the banana while listening to The Wedding Singer OBC album. There is some catchy music in there. There is some adequate singing, and some less so. And some clever arranging.

Good news from the appointment, my vision is still clinging desperately to 20-20, retinopathy is unchanged from last year. Disappointing item: the doctor has taken down all his daughter's artwork, and is making do with an electronic photo frame scrolling through family photos. I was going to ask him about that, but he was already half an hour late, with four people waiting.

After a quick stop at the pharmacy to get some supplies, I parked my blurry eyes in a small lounge area out of direct sunlight for about an hour. After a while I was able to read a book, but it took more time than I expected to be safe to drive. Drove to work, where I apparently missed a big party celebrating the signing of a big client. I grabbed a box lunch instead, and spent a couple of hours re-installing my server software. Should have only taken half an hour, but the instructions for a couple of key items were wrong or missing, and I needed to steal files from a known working server to get mine going. And that's when the test tracking system went down, which meant I couldn't get to the test cases I was supposed to run. Turns out I was assigned some new stuff which I'll need some help with from one of the leads. Tomorrow.

Parked at Starbucks for a while, read some more Titan while traffic thinned. Drove to Costco and dropped off the film. Turns out they could have done 4 reels at a time, which I'll take advantage of next time, if they do okay on the first two. It'll take a month. Their brochure says they clean the film, and repair any bad splices, which is good because these splices haven't been touched in 50 years and may be all brittle and non-splicy. It was too late to go in search of Chinese herbs, so I did a little shopping, and even less buying there. Four items. How could I resist smoked white fish?

Home, heated up some frozen taquitos, was pleasantly surprised that they tasted pretty good. Watched the first half of the penultimate episode in the PBS National Parks special from October. Despite the rave reviews, Brown has done a really sucky job of staying on-topic. Each episode jumps around between the parks he is supposed to be focusing on and parks which have nothing to do with them. This one starts with a snippet about Yosemite, but the episode is billed as the Everglades and East Coast parks, especially the ones created during WWII.

Talking about getting stuff done, last night I finally finished the last Harry Potter novel. Much more verbose than it needed to be, a lot of it she pulled right out of her butt. It did not have the compelling drive of the previous books, and had the feel of her being paid by the word (which we know is not the case). The hype was all about how we would be all shocked by who gets killed in this book, but she really didn't take any risks there. The final chapter almost shouts for HP:TNG. It was worth reading in paperback.

Another thing completed which the funeral got in the way of: I finally went through my Flickr set from Consonance and corrected misspelled names, made replies to some of the comments, and marveled at the Trixy Pixie costumes and hsifyppah's amazingly gorgeous concert dress.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
It may be time to change the litterboxes - need to check
Search for Chinese herbs