Regretfully Leaving ConFlikt Behind

[filkertom]

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.

Comments

[alverant.livejournal.com]

Glad you had a good con, Tom! No real plans here. I want to work on the DucKon (http://www.duckon.org/) site, mostly to come up with a design that fits the theme "Plan B". I still have no idea how to represent it with graphics. Over the weekend I set up an RSS feed for the site. I hope there will be more stuff to add to the site this week.

Then I have some maintenance work to do with my City of Hero characters.

Hey is it me or have TV shows been cutting back on secondary characters? NCIS LA kidnapped one of the new agents last week, Numb3rs had one character quit and the main protagonist's fiance has rarely been seen these past few episodes, on Psych the girlfriend left to build a school in Uganda. Has similar things been happening on other shows? Are the networks trying to save some money by trimming the cast any?

[peachtales.livejournal.com]

Finished my federal tax return and am looking for a job. And trying to fight my way through nebulous unemployment info to see if I am even eligible.

[hsifyppah.livejournal.com]

It was so lovely to see you! And to see you rock the house! I think my favourite part of this con is getting to introduce my local friends who don't travel much to the awesomeness that is my friends from far-away filk cons. (Man, I knew you weren't done when there wasn't no Rocket Ride at the end. ;) )

Now I must pout 'cause I won't see you until OVFF. Pout!

[hsifyppah.livejournal.com]

"wasn't no Rocket Ride?" Oh god, go back to sleep, Brooke.

[sdelmonte]

In theory, I have a lot of work to do. It all depends on whether my boss breaks her logjam and can work with me on joint projects. Otherwise, Lost is back tomorrow and we all wait eagerly for the results from the various groundhogs, so the week has promise.

Yes, I think that Batya and Merav did "307 Imps," though I cannot recall if they had co-conspirators.

And I really, really want to get out to Conflikt next year, to see Ben Newman get his due and to see Brooke and Marc as toastmasters. But I also want to get to GaFilk to see Matt Leger as toast, and given the shorter (and cheaper) trip, if we do either, odds are it would have to GaFilk. I wish I could be a filk-jetsetter, with a fortune to spend on travel and a private jet to get me from Atlanta to Boston (for Arisia) to Seattle to the UK. And time off to sleep in between.

[ladymondegreen.livejournal.com]

Nope, we're the only ones to blame for 307 Imps. I wonder who pulled it out. I think we've only performed it twice, and then I did it 'solo' once was at the OVFF hallway dead-dog with tollers filling in the interstitial bits.

Apparently our creation has legs.

Also? I can't wait to see Marc do the Steve Goodman thing. We're hoping to drop at least one Steve Goodman tune into our Duckcon show this June.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

It does indeed have legs, and I laughed a lot because, well, Anne has in her time been a BPAL addict (although I think she's more devoted to Possets these days). Heck, I've got a bottle of "Premature Burial" on my desk.

And, as for Marc, he did do at least one Goodman song on Friday night, but I'm really thinking of his overall tone -- vocals, guitar stylings, he's just really got that easy-going lightness in his performance, and he's able to go from silly to serious and back with no effort. Very nice indeed.

[alverant.livejournal.com]

Sorry you lost your job. Good luck finding a new one. Maybe you'll be able to trade up.

[bluesmancd.livejournal.com]

It was a great con. It sure was great seeing you live for the first time.


And I'm really glad I have another guitarist example to include in my 5,138th conversation of "...it's tuned down a whole step... don't worry where the capo is... don't try to figure out transposition, just play the same damn chords I am... *mind trick* this is not the capo you're looking for..."

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Indeed, and you've got some nice work yourself, m'friend. Keep an eye on this guy, gang.

[admnaismith.livejournal.com]

My God, but you rocked the house, Tom. It was great having you up in this part of the country.

[solarbird]

I had to leave before the dead dog because of annathepiper's early work start today, but it was great catching up a bit with you and I'm sorry I took off without saying g'bye - but I couldn't find you! I looked! And we needed to leave. Hopefully it won't be another, um, two decades before next time, eh? ^_^

[annathepiper]

Great fun to hear you perform again, sir! And I must note that after grabbing three of your CDs this weekend, I went home and bought two more of of iTunes. ;)

[palenoue.livejournal.com]

Glad I finally got to see you perform in person. Many of my email friends have been asking all weekend "Is Tom Smith _really_ that fast?" and this morning I answered them all with "No, he's faster."

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

:) So sorry we didn't have the time we needed to talk this weekend -- I'll e-mail you later in the week, we'll compare notes, an' stuff.

[palenoue.livejournal.com]

Don't worry about it. I've been to enough cons to know how they warp time and space. Did you get the email with the link to the song stuff?

[scifantasy.livejournal.com]

Gods, I wish I could have been there...law school puts a real crimp in your life.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

I did indeed, and will be perusing it on the train.

[hsifyppah.livejournal.com]

tibicina was the one who sang it, IIRC.

[banjoplayinnerd.livejournal.com]

Yeah, and don't we know it. What you might not know about bluesmancd is that he's been a bluesman, as in doing it in front of other people and gettin' paid an' stuff, since like forever, and somehow ended up at Conflikt I having never heard of filk before. I'll let him tell the rest of the story, or not as he sees fit, but since then he's made up for lost time.

Dang but I wish I could get together with him more often, but he lives in Redmond, I live on the other side of Lake Washington, and . . . well you know.

[banjoplayinnerd.livejournal.com]

Very glad to have met you finally. And once again, thanks for the feedback on the juried one-shot. I'm still trying to figure out how to address what you brought up. I suspect it'll work itself out.

But the song from the song contest totally made up for it. :D That one's going into the repertoire.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Excellent. Y'know, conventions should start designing con badges with spaces for online handles... something like:

Convention Name LJ Name
Facebook
Badge Art Twitter
Other
Attendee Name Other

Just a thought.

ETA: Stupid spacing didn't work. Thanks, LJ. I'm thinking two-thirds for the basic con stuff -- art, con name, attendee name -- and the right third for a vertical list of online names or avatars. Hey, there's something for the folks who have online badge purchases -- upload your own handles, icons, even your own badge art (or at least offer a cool choice).

[dornbeast.livejournal.com]

I saw stickers which could be put on the bottom of a con badge with the lj "person" logo a year or two back, but I haven't seen them since.

Assuming that there's no copyright problem, this would be a good thing.

And if it is a copyright problem, I smell a marketing opportunity for companies.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Many hugs, much good luck. Sorry I didn't notice you'd mentioned the unemployment the other day.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Don't worry about that, kind sir. We've had an eye on this guy for a while.

(I remember tarkrai's first words when CD finished his juried one-shot at Conflikt I: "How long you been doing this?" Like he hadda ask... I think the answer was something on the order of a couple decades. :)

Oh, no. We got this guy, hook, line, sinker, damn near lost the fishing pole. :)