filkertom | Regretfully Leaving ConFlikt Behind (Reply)

ConFlikt was extra-mega-fantastic with sprinkles. (That would've been the all-day rain on Saturday.)

All the con staff, including Con Chair Beth Runnerwolf, Vice Chair Rick, Programming Head vixyish, especially my liaison Jen, Jeffrey Cornish, ever-damn-body was wonderful. Thanks so much for all the help and support.
Everybody else was wonderful, too, with too many names to list, although I would be remiss if I didn't mention Frank Hayes, the ever-fantastic cadhla, hms42, lemmozine, palenoue, hsifyppah, filkferengi, technoshaman, Toastmaster admnaismith, jenrose1, Cecilia Eng, Kathy Mar, Marc Osier (dang, man, you're really getting a Steve Goodman vibe going, and it sounds great), Char MacKay, Aydan, Tristan, Bill & Carole Laubenheimer, Kathy Sands, Creede, Dara, moshez, Luis Garcia and his brother Tomas, October Country, several others whose names and/or LJ names I can't remember this morning.... oh, just everybody.
I spent more time hanging out with and listening to Alexander James Adams than I have in, like, ever, and honestly Alex is better than Heather Alexander. His Friday concert was so high-bar-setting (he frickin' started with "He of the Sidhe") that I was terrified all of my inadequacies and flaws as a performer would be laid bare, and the con would wonder why the hell they paid for that train trip.
On the other hand, I got him but good during the Friday open filk. He'd just done "The Stolen Child", which was, like, the forty-third song of Faerie he'd performed in the past twenty minutes, and I did "Smash the Frickin' Fairies" and just broke the room, but most especially him. He was laughing so hard and turning so many different colors that I almost lost it mid-song myself.
The panel on Recording Your Own CD ended up much more technically detailed than I expected, but that ended up being a good thing. I think tfabris and I are on the verge of getting a lot more functionality out of our software than we realized we had.
The "Whose Line?" set Saturday was a lot of fun. I think, though, that I'm going to assemble a page of overall rules and conventions for playing some of the games, and for being a moderator. It'll make things smoother in the future.
The Interfilk auction raised a bunch o' money. An original CD by Phoenix got $600.
I went for almost two hours on Saturday night, and I guess I didn't have to worry that much about being compared with Alex. ;) VERY hot crowd, I only made a few little mistakes, lots and lots of energy, a good range of stuff, I faked an encore by starting to leave the stage after "The Here And Now" and then doing "307 Ale" and "Rocket Ride", lots of singing along and hand-clapping and the whole thing was just fantastic.
Juried One-Shots and Songwriting Contest were pretty good as well, and I'm sure the results will be up on the ConFlikt web site soon, and I'll link to 'em.
Got a nap and a pizza, and went down for almost three hours of the Smoked Salmon Party (this is the Pacific Northwest, Dead Dogs are at a premium). Again, lots of excellent music and shtick, the highlights of which for me were Alex and Marc combining on something lovely that I can't recall the name of right now, Alex and Tony doing a lovely slow version of "I Want To Hold Your Hand", a parody of "307 Ale" about BPAL (which I think was written by ladymondegreen and batyatoon, given they're invoked in a scripted shtick on the lyrics I got), and admnaismith performing his Hamlet-based parody of "The Ballad Of Fenton", which I had completely forgotten existed. Heck, I even signed his page of lyrics FSM knows how many years ago.
More hugs from more wonderful people. Sigh. It's a good life.

So now the con is over, I intend to do some laundry, Jen will pick me up for lunch and the schlep back to the train station, and, yeah. Good con. Very good con. I intend to get back here again, although I'm not sure when it'll happen.

How's your week looking?

ETA:

ladymondegreen does indeed claim ownership of "307 Imps". And, I have no idea why I kept calling Marc Osier "Paul". Must still be tired.

ETA2: I cannot believe I didn't mention Luis Garcia or

lemmozine.