Anyway, Consonance will have wound down by the time I post this. I left the dead-squid filk a bit after 10; it was just really getting going, but my contact lenses were becoming troublesome.
It was a bit smaller and quieter (quiet? a filk con?) than in times past, and lacked the synergy with Contact that it's had in some years, but it was still well above critical mass, and fun.
I wandered in Friday afternoon, and started out by appeasing the hucksters... of whom there were only two this year; an expenditure of a bit under $100 at each table got me a fair stack of CDs (so far, I've listened to the latest from Locksley and Tom Smith, and started on Shoggoth on the Roof).
Most of the usual suspects were there. Dr. Jane is now Dr. James, which spurred some intresting discussions in the hallways. Blake Hodgetts was there as toastmaster, currently sans mustache. ("That means without it." - G. Marx) The guest of honor was Terence Chua; I'd certainly encountered the name before, but not the person, nor (to my recollection) any of his songs. Juanita Coulson was there... I have two of her out-of-print tapes squirreled away; really should get around to digitizing them. The Interfilk guest was Adam Selzer (who?). Oh, and the Duras Sisters had reappeared as the Harmony Heifers, with a new CD almost ready for release.
The Friday programming consisted of one concert and a few theme circles, and of course open filking. At one circle, I heard several additional verses for The Reader (which does, after all, invite such things). Eventually, I faded and wandered home, remaining awake enough to look up "Banned from Arkham," which someone had been talking about. Reading it, the scansion seems rather off... but, listening to the MP3, it develops that Terence's tune isn't exactly Leslie's, and some of the scansion depends on a Singaporan accent - when Terence sings it, it scans just fine.
Saturday afternoon, the programming track got busier, with a string of concerts. I made it to the ones by Mara Brener, Leslie Fish, the Harmony Heifers, and Adam Selzer.
OK, I guess there's a good reason for Interfilk guests. That Selzer guy is sick, and twisted, and... and he has a CD, which now I know I Must Have. Might have been a long time before I heard of him (let alone bought the CD) if he hadn't been brought out here.
Tinga got to go for the afternoon. She wasn't being terribly social, but she did perch on a few other people's fingers and/or shoulders (as well as screeching at some people).
After dinner Saturday, two more concerts: Juanita Coulson, and Terence Chua. Terence has several more delightfully twisted songs; Frank Hayes fans may wince at a re-interpretation of "When I Was a Boy."
After the concerts comes open filking. Most of the activity was in the bawdy-themed circle. I wandered off a bit past midnight, thereby surely missing the best of the night, but getting home while awake enough to drive seemed like a good idea.
Sunday, I spent the morning on chores (having been busy working on Friday), so I didn't get back to the con until a little before 2, in time for the Cthulhu Cabaret. Pulling into the hotel parking lot, I observed the presence of emergency vehicles and a swarm of paramedics/EMTs/whatever at the entrance. Had someone sung "Mushrooms" around the con chair? Nope; one of the other attendees was having an asthma attack, and one of the organizers had (over her objections) called for help. (As of late evening, she was reported to be doing better, but likely to be in the hospital for a couple of days.)
So, off to the main function room. There's a crowd (the JT Filkers, I guess) in the hallway, rehearsing Cthulhu carols. The room is being set up for the cabaret, and people are filtering in. An organizer is running around, muttering something to the effect of, "How can you lose a whole choir?" I speculate that the choir accidentally sang the right words, and was devoured, but it turns out that everybody's there, just not seated as a group. It was fun, with some delightfully weird songs, though a bit short. I suppose I could have signed up to sing one of the Cthulhu songs I know ("Cthulhu Lite FM", or Jordin Kare's "The Elder God C'Thulhu"), but I Don't Sing On Stage. (In a small chaos circle, sometimes; on stage, no.)
During the dinner break, I took the blob of weird bread dough that had been bubbling in my kitchen since morning, and, on a whim, formed it into a vaguely octopoid shape before baking. The resulting Cthulhu Bread drew some attention at the Dead Squid Filk. (Unfortunately, it wasn't especially good bread; the fermented Grape-Nuts seemed like a good idea at the time, and might actually have been OK, but would seem to require a process change; also, steel-cut oats are hereby recommended only as an ingredient in dwarf bread.)
The singing started off inauspiciously with some attempts at "relevant" folksongs (a topic for another time... hint: black-and-white worldviews, being stuck in the 60s, and treating stale talking points as current facts are not good technique unless you're preaching to the choir), but that fizzled out after a while, and things got properly fannish.
I'm sure I missed a lot of good stuff by leaving early, but I did catch Blake singing "The Great Nebraska Sea" at manic speed, and Leslie singing "The Sun is Also a Warrior" (I'd heard Kanef's parody before, but never the original), and something based on the intriguing premise that Ahab was attempting to kill a malevolent God using a whale as a voodoo doll.
But now, alas, it's Monday morning, and I'd better get some work done. Oscilloscope repair gets put off until later in the week, I guess; it's time to fire up the logic analyzer, and track down the bugs in my firmware.
Recent Comments