Leslie Fish has been confirmed as a guest.

Tags: dragon*con, filk, leslie fish
Current Location: bedroom
Current Music: none

March 27 at Daric's house. If you need the URL for directions, let me know.

Tags: filk
Current Location: bedroom
Current Mood: happy
Current Music: none - too early

I didn't go to the banquet, as I'd overeaten at breakfast and Tanith was supplying me with the wonderful prime rib of venison without the au jus. I ended up doing a lot of sitting and stuff, got down to the Guest of Honor concert while the banquet was ending (and this was only the second concert I went to, or I usually go to). Alexander James Adams is a fantastic performer. Since he recently had surgery on his hands, he did some karaoke of some of his songs, which was perfectly fine (including the infamous "March of Cambreadth").

Interfilk auction: There was a lot of stuff that went for exhorbitant amounts, but hey, it's for charity. I hadn't planned on getting anything, but found two of the glasses from the Star Trek canon-rewrite that looked cool, and it looks like I'll get them for $2 apiece. Some of Tanith's food went up for auction, and I'll get some fantastic venison and other things for $70, and the sequel to Rosemary and Rue by filking's Seanan McGuire - I'll get an autographed galley proof for $55. The first book is pretty good - I'm not into mystery novels, though, but hey, it's charity.

I went into one of the rooms and found that people were having trouble remembering the tune for Meg Davis's "Captain Jack and the Mermaid." Well, being that I thought it was one of the fantastic songs that came out, I know the tune, so I started to "belt" out the first three verses and into the bridge so that they could hear how it sounded (making sure that if needed, they'd know the chording). Seems that people thought that if you started singing it in the key of D that the bridge is in the key of B minor. It's not. If you start singing it in the key of D, the bridge is done in the key of D minor. It's not a switch to the relative minor.

I finally ended up going to the room, checking e-mail and the Sunday comics and climbing into bed at about 2AM, and woke up (whether I wanted to or not) at 5:43 AM.

Other than as part of the chorus on "Cambreadth," I still have not sung at a GaFilk as a soloist since 2003. That hasn't changed. The voice isn't there anymore since it doesn't get used. It's close to the point of the voice being silenced.

Tags: filk, gafilk, interfilk
Current Location: con suite
Current Mood: tired
Current Music: nothing

gets into your head and, well, it just won't come out? Well, I was talking to James Heaney of Starship Excelsior about the upcoming episode, and the special year-end contest episode, where he told me something that I won't reveal here. I told him it sounded like a case of "Ecklar Syndrome." He recognized the name. I told him about her nom de plume and the fact that she is a filker, then told him to listen to Julia's "Roxanne," which I am now listening to. It's one of those songs that you could listen to 100 times over and it'll haunt you for its beauty and its story.

Don't believe me? Click here, find "Roxanne" in the list, and tell me what you think afterwards. And that's only a rough track.

Tags: filk, julia ecklar, roxanne
Current Location: bedroom
Current Mood: happy
Current Music: Roxanne by Julia Ecklar

Filking in Atlanta has been extremely quiet the past few years. The biggest problem has been trying to find people to host housefilks. People who had been hosting have moved, are moving, aren't offering to host, it's gotten difficult to get people to commit. Life going on makes it more difficult. For instance, we haven't had a "Heart of the Filk" in Cordele since 2007. People have offered to host, but some of them are not what a lot of people would call "geographically desirable." Now, I used to drive 150 miles from Sylmar to San Diego for housefilks, and I've driven from Atlanta to Mobile, Montgomery, and Huntsville, Alabama for "local" housefilks. People haven't been as willing to do so in quite a while. I'm not 100% sure why (the economy, the cost of gas, etc.). I've always indicated a willingness to carpool in exchange for part of the cost of gas. I mean, my sport cute will get anywhere from 23 to 30 miles to the gallon (depending on the highway driving, and yes, it may be rated at 27 for the highway, I did indeed once get 30). It'll hold myself and 4 passengers and luggage and music and stuff (but not the store).

Tell me what you think. How can we get people to start hosting again? I'm open to suggestions.

Now as far as filk and me, this is the more personal thing. For instance, at GaFilk, my voice has been silent (save Auld Lang Syne) since T.J. Burnside-Clapp asked me to accompany her and Linda Melnick at Linda's concert a few years back. Because of the way my body is working, no matter what time I go to bed, I get up now at 6AM, maybe 7AM if I'm lucky. But as a result, I've not sung at all at night in years. I'm also a huckster, which means I stay in the dealer's room all day in the hopes I can make sales. It also means I have to be up earlier than most so that the other hucksters can get into the room in order to get set up for the day. I don't mind doing it, but the opportunity cost for it is not being able to listen to the late-night filking or not being able to even sing at night at all. I miss the good stuff, but it's the price I pay for being huckster head. As I said, I'm not complaining, I merely am stating fact.

I wonder if people even miss my voice. Other than "it's me me me me me me," as I'm sure I'll hear, tell me what you think.

Tags: filk, filking, gafia, gafilk
Current Location: bedroom
Current Mood: tired
Current Music: the local news

Someone had mentioned, either here or on the dreaded Facebook, that I showed up on the Tom Smith at GaFilk 2001 CD. Could someone please let me know which track? Thanks.

Tags: filk, shameless plug
Current Location: bedroom

is on the 16th at the home of Dave and Signe Wegener in Hampton, Georgia. E-mail me for details.

Tags: filk
Current Location: work
Current Mood: happy
Current Music: none

this coming weekend at Gaylaxicon in Bethesda, Maryland. It seems I'm the first-ever filk guest at a Gaylaxicon which, like the "Oldest Established, Permanent Floating Filk Con in the East" moves from year to year. In 2007 it was here in Atlanta. This year it's in Bethesda. Next year it's in Minneapolis.

Here's the description of what I'll be doing: "P60 - Aural Pleasure: Filking 101 - We've brought a filking guru here to give us the lowdown on filking. Come join him for a discussion about what filking is, and a filking session!"

Tags: filk, gaylaxicon
Current Location: work
Current Mood: productive
Current Music: none

I am not at Dragon*Con as usual. After the problems I saw in 2004 (50-60000 people in a space built for 20-25000), I decided that the only time I would go, if at all, would be if someone I wanted to really hear perform was there. Well, this happened in 2006 when Heather Alexander came to perform before heading to the Heatherlands (which I didn't know was happening). In 2007, I wasn't at Dragon*Con because I was "running" filking at Worldcon aka Nippon2007. This was truly an experience.

My only exposure to Dragon*Con this year was on Friday at work. See, I work at Peachtree Center, right above the Peachtree Center MARTA station where most people going to Dragon*Con get off the train to get to the hotels. All are within about .2 miles of the office building where I work. Now, having attended conventions since 1973 (I went to the first, second and fourth Star Trek conventions in California - Equicons 1, 2 and 4), I think that by now I'd know what to expect. I've also been to 3 Worldcons (with hopefully a 4th in 2010 and a 5th in 2011), and I've seen a lot of regional and local conventions in my time. Dragon*Con is different.

I ran into Andrew McKee of the Brobdingnagian Bards, who was buying pizza while I was walking in the Peachtree Center food court heading to get the mail for my office. I surprised him. We hugged. He asked what I was doing there. I told him - work. He was surprised. I explained why I would not be at Dragon*Con, and I think I mentioned that I was doing a Celtic festival this weekend as a vendor. We parted.

Later that afternoon, I gave thatcrazycajun some coupons so that he could save some money were he to eat in the food court at Peachtree Center. Afterward, I met with Carlos Pedraza (he formerly of the Hidden Frontier writing staff and now working on Star Trek: Phase II) and treated him to dinner at Ninfa's, where he had some soup that to him was fantastic.

First of all, it's no longer just science fiction, fantasy and horror. It's grunge bands, movie b-girls (or is that b-movie girls?), professional wrestling (why???) and so many other things which are not related to the genre that I'm not sure about. It's also way too many people in too little space. A good example was when I went in 2006 and it took me something like 30 minutes to get from the Marriott into the Hyatt for something because the flow of humanity was worse than what you saw in the Star Trek episode "The Mark of Gideon" (about overpopulation). Now, considering that the distance from the entrance to the Marriott to the back entrance to the Hyatt is a distance of maybe 1000', that should tell you something.

In addition, since I do the filk track web page, I've sort of been kept apprised of the goings on since 2000. First, you had someone who was running the track who lived several hundred miles away and couldn't make meetings. Then he disappeared. Then someone volunteered, did a great job, and then was suddenly replaced with no apparent reason (at least to the filkers - if there is a reason, I'd really like to know. So would the person who ran the track in 2006). In 2007, the track head received no cooperation, communication, or any other -ation from the powers that be. I got more help from the concom at Nippon2007 (which had a total attendance of 2671) than was given to the track head at Dragon*Con 2007 and in my case, the help was something like 10000 miles away in Japan! And then I found out, months later, that the room that the filkers use now, which was not the multimedia center, was the nursery and it wasn't available for filkers until after midnight, and the cribs and playpens and whatever else was in there weren't taken out? To me, with a track that was growing and being forced into a room way too small for the number of participants, this reeks of either "call the fire marshall" or "the concom doesn't care about filkers."

When I contacted the 2007 track head and asked what plans there were for 2008 so I could put them up on the web page, I was told said person was, in no uncertain terms, not going to be returning to Dragon*Con because of the extremely (to say the least) poor treatment received. I then started asking the powers that be who was going to be the filk track head so that I could contact that person and see what would be happening. No answer ever arrived until Robby Hilliard who, with the band he's a part of (Olta) should be at the Appalachian/Heritage Celtic Festival and Highland Games in Chickamauga, GA (about 10-20 minutes from Chattanooga), volunteered or was given the job or I don't know what the exact story is. He came on board with 34 days before the convention. I don't know how much cooperation he did or did not receive, but he was able to pull something off (a la Kate Evans at Con Diego back in 1990, where people were told by Danny Davis that "no one filks at a worldcon, no one filks at a westercon, and there'll be no filking at NASFiC" or words to that effect and she did it in 3 weeks). Now Robby evidently was able to do a great job, but I still wonder about the problem of the room for the track and the fact that no one was given responsibility or cooperation or whatever until 34 days before the convention.

Let me explain something: filking has been a part of the genre and its fandom since way before Joss Whedon, since before Superman, since before most of the genres represented at Dragon*Con by their tracks existed. Filking goes back to the 1930's, even if the term itself didn't come into being until 1953 (as opposed to what it says on the Dragon*Con webpage, where it says 1960's - it was the mid-1950's). Filking was here before Star Trek, Star Wars, you name it. Yet filking has been the brown shoes with the black tux for time immemorial. It's true, but it doesn't make it right. The fact that the powers that be are treating filking like it's no more than a blip is an affront to SF convention history, where "science fiction folksinging" has been around since the first worldcon. A lot of early fandom, people who became the authors we revere and venerate today, were science fiction folksingers back in the 30's, 40's and 50's. That doesn't seem to matter to Dragon*Con.

There were several comment threads in the Dragon*Con Live Journal community, wherein people were saying "if this is how we're going to be treated, then maybe it's time to vote with our feet and not go to Dragon*Con." Granted we're only talking a few hundred people here, but if each and every one of them would let their thoughts, feelings and opinions be known to the powers that be through the mail at the Dragon*Con office, maybe someone would have the light bulb flicker on and realize that if you want to continue to grow and nourish fandom, you don't exclude anything that's a part of the genre. And as I said, filking has been a part of the genre since at least 1939, maybe earlier, I don't know.

Getting back to Dragon*Con: the only way I will go to Dragon*Con now is as a guest, maybe. I am now doing internet audio acting within the genre, working on almost a dozen different productions, including Starship Excelsior, Star Trek: Diplomatic Relations, Supergirl: Last Daughter of Krypton, along with productions through Darker Projects, Misfits Audio, Imagination Lane, Avalon and, in the future I'm hoping Star Trek: Osiris, Star Trek: Phoenix, one of the Hidden Fronter productions (again, I hope), the list is growing. I'd make a decent guest because I can talk about these productions a bit and show how I do the work, etc. Will it happen? I doubt it, because even if I send my audio curriculum vitae, I'm not sure they'd accept me as a guest. Come to think of it, I probably should write the danged thing up!

Back to the main point: Dragon*Con has gotten too big for the facilities it has. It needs to be cut down from the "official" 20-30000 attendees because eventually someone's going to get hurt and emergency medical personnel will be unable to get through to help said person because there are way too many people in too small a space. They're not going to be going back to the Inforum or the AmericasMart in the near future I don't think - I'm not sure the powers that be ever will. In addition, and this is my opinion, I think that the powers that be want the numbers there and I'm not sure they really care about the fact that too many people trying to move at once can cause problems. I think that if they were to lose the filkers and those affiliated with filking who come for the filking or the Dr. Demento stuff, they wouldn't care. I don't know. We do have a filk convention in Atlanta in January. It's been going on now since 1999. We have our 11th incarnation in January 2009, and our 12th in 2010. We're not too big, and we're a good little convention (never getting more than 200 people, though we've been close!).

As far as my involvement with Dragon*Con, since no one else has been willing to do a filk track page, I will continue to do so on my website. I will keep people up to date with the news as I get it. I will delete the names of the guilty parties. It will be there for people to see who's coming (as long as I'm informed), hopefully a schedule of events, who knows? BUT, you will not physically see me there, at least not as an attendee. I'm doing as fen have done for years - I'm voting with my feet and my checkbook. I suggest you do the same.

Tags: dragon*con, filk
Current Location: General Bragg Inn, Chickamauga, GA
Current Mood: tired
Current Music: none

As of April 1, 2008, I had still not heard a word about the filk track for Dragon*Con 2008. I called the convention office and was told to contact someone (no names here). I did so on April 8, 2008, and was awaiting news.

Since I'd heard nothing yet, I dropped a note to the Dragon*Con office via e-mail at around 9:00 AM on April 29. At 9:50 AM, I received an answer from the Dragon*Con office directly: "yes, there will be a Filk track for Dragon*con 2008. I do not know if we will have a Filk guest. We do not always have guests for the FAN tracks, which is what the Filk track is."

Tags: dragon*con, filk
Current Location: work
Current Music: none