...and then I have a very amusing interlude writing collaborative randomness with tamtrible and lord_maahes, and I think that there's serious potential for this con. Only half of everyone left when the Leslie Fish concert was over! That does not make me the happy, because people for filk circle are good!

Aha! Filk circle is attracting people! We might actually fill up the bulk of the chairs! Whee!!

Commentary from the concert:
Leslie Fish in concert! Hooray! She was my actual introduction to filk in Carmen Miranda's Ghost.
Naomi likes Leslie Fish. (Oh dear.)
Leslie Fish has cats to give away. Maybe Heather and I can use a cat? Um, not in the studio dear.
Note to self: invite a friendly spirit inside computers.

Always inward-turning
Homeward star is brightly burning

The slightly telepathic backup guitarist. Perfect adaptation for the position!
filksicle!

Google is my songbook!
( Read more... )

Does a filk circle count as a grown-up game of musical chairs?

Sang "Goodnight, Demon Slayer." Could use lots of rehearsal on the verses, notably, the tune. Hooray

OMG. Steve Irwin is dead. Yes, I made sure that the address was good by going to the parent site.

It seems that Naomi has inherited most of Dagger and Marah both. Dear me. This could become scary!

It is good that crying children can be rushed out to avoid disruption of the festivities.
"And if you try shoving a kazoo up one of my dinosaurs, we're going to have a little talk!" -- cadhla to Leslie Fish, apropos of the "That's Just Wrong" type award Leslie got once, featuring a kazoo shoved into the groin of a stuffed Barney, and cadhla's cuddly stuffed velociraptor that the guy with the guitar got to hug.
"It's probably easier to pretend to be her if you're wearing her underwear." -- cadhla to the guy with the kids, the beard, and the hat.
"Nothing says love like a go-go girl in a cage." "Will there be spiders?" "..."
http://www.thevioletwing.com/ http://www.thevioletwing.com/html/play_dates.html
"Please state the nature of the musical emergency." (emergency holographic Nancy Freeman)
"Cesium's unstable, Amanda!" "That's why I thought you took it!"

There were kids in the lobby with straw-rocket-balloons. One kid complained that his was leaking. It was spit, of course. "Rocket fuel?" I asked. He giggled and proceeded to actively drool into his balloon to enhance the effect. EWW.
( Rocket-balloon drawing )
Shared trickofthedark's latest HP Widdershins ficlet with tamtrible. There was much of the giggling.

Cuddling up to a warm laptop is a good cure for over-air-conditioning. Hooray for laptops. Hooray for conventions. Hooray for wireless internet.

I'm still not all the way awake. I suspect I'm not going to be very much of that for very much of the rest of the weekend, though I seem to be hatching a Cunning Plan.

...Last night I was hit by an incredible spasm of the "erk I haven't seen Darkside in far too long" and nearly went spare. So. Since there's not much programming this afternoon that I Absolutely Have to See, I may well ditch the con for an afternoon and head out to Mesa. I'm halfway there already...

Someone was under the impression that I was in costume as a fairy yesterday. Evidently when I am perky, I am Very, Very Perky. I was just in my regular clothes, with the fluffy skirt and the high-energy. No fairy costume, just me. (Is that really how I look?)

Picked up a copy of Pretty Little Dead Girl. This makes me very happy.

Filk circle Friday night wrapped up early, because (in the words of cadhla) we were all zombies. This led to a filk bunny starting its merry journey around the inside of my head, featuring the theme of a filk circle -- filled with zombies!

Unwilling to go to bed quite so early, I wandered around until I found that the anime room was still open. So I wandered right in!

A guy wandered in slightly after me. But for the darker, more elegant eyebrows and the increased height, he was still close enough to a match for Darkside that my hormones went "Hello!" He could have been the guy's stunt double, maybe. I made serious effort to make saving rolls, and actually managed to avoid propositioning him.

I did, however, make bad puns in his direction. The anime of the moment was Naruto, and there were exploding tags (google it if you want; that's what they're called...) so I did the eyebrow thing and scribbled in the back of my notebook. "Like this?" I asked, showing him the notebook.

<explode> stuff </explode>

He made a groan of appreciation and shared my notebook with the guy next to him, who said that I was depraved.

Then I noticed that the ceiling was dripping. It had evidently been doing that all day (condensation from the pipes) but it was worrisome enough that an engineer eventually came. Somewhat after that, everyone was getting very tired and there was sleep to be had.

By the time the con is over, all the clothing that I put in the drawer will be either on me or in the laundry bag that I packed along. My backpack will be completely empty save for whatever I can find that will fit in it. I am debating the merits of unpacking the laundry bag directly into the washer once I get back home. Just grab soap and change, go out to the car, bring it back to the laundry room, and let 'er spin.

I was paranoid for about an hour that I'd parked Vash in the wrong spot and he'd be towed. I eventually decided that there was nothing I could do about it at this hour of the night, and I'd check in the morning. No tow! I'll be sure to inquire at the front desk about where the fuck I should be parking before bed this evening.

I woke up around 11 in the morning, and grabbed applesauce and clothing, then bumbled out to see what was happening. I was about a half-hour late for the start of the "meet the GoHs" panel with dduane and petermorwood; I slipped in the side and found a seat near lord_maahes and her geekboy. (Geekboys make the world happy. There should be more of them.) The panel was hysterical. Some choice quotes:

"...and the Death of Mad King Ludvig. We were trying to get them to do do CSI: Bavaria." -- dduane, on a chat with German producers. On the next Door Into, if there's going to be one: "There is going to be another. I'm just not old enough to write it yet."

"A house with two writers tends to look like an explosive mine combined with a half-demolished bookshop." -- petermorwood, on the necessity of cleaning before housesitters arrive, and the truth that life with writers is. He also had many stories of airplane travel: the previously-mentioned anecdote, and a yelp he made about not being allowed to carry a bottle of water onboard: " 'It's just water! It's not even heavy water!' And then you learn that's not a funny they needed to hear."

( Oh, is that your wee starship? )

The panel wrapped up as there were rather frantic motions at the door involving us, the gesticulator, and some hotel staff with stage paneling. The Filk GoH Concert was to be in the same room a half-hour hence. Fen and pros and all, we were out the door.

cadhla came by, munching a tomato the ruby/purple/brown color of half-dried blood. Conversation ensued as the knot of people with me wanted to know what strange alien fruit this was. A string of tomatogeekery followed. Then there was concert! We are evidently the Horror Movie Love crowd, as the Black Death song and "You Get the Tickets" both got immense amounts of cheering. I attempted to capture photos. There was stripping onstage. Glee.

I got hugged post-concert -- well, the shoulder-bump that serves as a substitute for hugging when hands are full. I'd evidently been looking a little under-the-weather at the start of it all. No surprises there -- I rarely look all the way on in the morning, and after Friday, I'm still recovering.

sithjawa, I need to know where to find your current mailing address. Heh, heh.

Update to youngwizards:

Diane and Peter have safely arrived at CopperCon, albeit sleep-deprived and no little loopy. Due in part to misplaced signage, the Thursday night pre-registered guests only signing was spottily attended. Word to the wise: any attempts to drive or eat in Tempe on the same weekend as a big ASU game will encounter inevitable delay. I am informed that Peter's sense of humor grows keener when he's not half-asleep. Bystanders sensitive to puns may tremble in fear!

The con will run through Monday afternoon.

Got there a bit after five. Traffic around the area was horrendous; I then learned there was an ASU game on. I went in the wrong entrance at first -- today I wasn't a hotel guest, just a con attendee. I turned around and looked for actual parking. I was in luck, and found one very close to the actual side entrance of the hotel close to the con area. East-dwellers (Mudd-East, not East Coast-East) would recognize the type of entrance, as it was like that little covered hallway thing that's right by the lounge on each side.

I came at five. That was when pre-reg fun & games were supposed to start. Of course, given that we are operating on Fandom Standard Time here, that meant that people with Con Business were starting to set up, not that it was All Set Up and Ready to Rock and Roll. I chilled.

At length, after much wandering between locations, testing the microphone, putting stuff back in the car, and jittering, there was programming. I wandered into the Movie Room, and instantly changed the gender ratio from 100% male. The male nearest my age struck up Conversation. ...Either that, or I struck it up. I'm not sure which. His Harlan Ellison story involves being in a vile mood, and nearly plowing down a guy who did not get out of his way. "Don't you know who I AM?" No, he did bloody not, and the guy was still in his way. ... He later learned that he was the toast of the con, and sheepishly apologized to the guy.

The movie room was way too cold. Air conditioning cranked up to arctic makes sense for cons, but does not make for comfort when there are four to fifteen people in a decent sized partition of the ballroom.

I wandered off after all that in search of the Diane Duane and Peter Morwood signing. The room it said it was going to be in on the .pdf had other people in it, and a notice on the room name plate saying that the 7pm signing had been delayed until 8pm. The older fella who (IIRC) had welcomed me to my first con and hadn't realized that it was my first con did some digging about, and turns out they'd been moved to another room.

The panel that wasn't the signing started mentioning the "greying of Fandom", and that while it's true that older forms of fan stuff aren't attracting the kids these days, that other forms are up and coming. Like anime! My hair color was pointed out as a counterexample to the greying. Yay blue hair!

There was another girl there who'd been looking for the same signing. And while our knight in shining sneakers was off looking for a Real Con Person, we sat and got to know each other a bit. She mentioned casually that she'd brought up dduane coming to this con on the forums, and only one person had responded and said they'd be there.

"What forums?" I asked.

"The livejournal community," she said.

"Hi, I'm azurelunatic," I returned. We'd already met, it seemed.

We eventually did get pointed to the right room, the one that was set up with a table and name tags and everything. Table, name tags, the works -- just no Guests of Honor. They'd been sent off for dinner, but no one in that party had a cellphone, so they were MIA, presumed fed. We socialized while waiting. And they did show up. I mentioned that Allegra had saved the sanity of the household, and that the battery life was just about right for hcolleen's waiting for work. petermorwood shared his run-in with the increased security (in a far more expanded form than at the link), to general hysteria.

Evidently they do not have a volunteer coordinator this year. Therefore, the con committee are going to be massively overworked. "Maybe someone will volunteer to do that," I said in jest. Evidently the likelihood of this happening is laughable. Little gears started turning in my head, in the way that meant I'd be getting some brilliant idea a few hours later.

One of the con-people had piles upon piles of books to be signed. People who couldn't make it had sent their collections to get autographed. (I was first up, and awked and eeped over my name. Am I really more Joan or Azz? In the end, I went for Joanie.) There was commentary about the cover art. Oh, was there commentary about the cover art. There was one with a person facing a dragon. Nice, except for the fact that there's no dragon in the book, and the protagonist's armor doesn't leave his butt bare like that. (Thong armor. Ow.) And then there was the one with the sword through the horse's head...

I was developing a headache. I went home. Once I got home, the headache faded. I deeply suspect that the wig was to blame. Dammit. So I'll be wearing my own hair for the con, not short blue hair.