Holy flaming pickled persimmons, it's been at least a week and a half since I've posted. Partly busy -- the last couple weeks have included some interesting interviews for the A&E section, including Chubby Checker and Judas Priest's Ian Hill. (Chubby was fun -- very soft-spoken over the phone even while making grandiose claims about pretty much inventing dancing for the last half-century ... and he may have a point.) Also overhauling the apartment. (Yeah, I know -- again. But it's starting to look really nice. At least one room. Four to go! Also somewhat tired due partly to a minor stomach bug that hasn't sickened me so much as given me intermittent bursts of quease.

At any rate, I'm going to pick up that vacation account before the memories recede into the, uh, recesses of, uh, memory.

DAY FIVE (TUESDAY, JUNE 15)
I wanted to make sure I got into the city proper at least once, so Marcy and I took the T in to Boston Commons. Meandered around there a bit; Marcy took a lot of flower photos; and we came across the incongruous site of someone lugging around a life-size cardboard cutout of Fabio in his prime. Ambled by the waterfront, along a bit of the Freedom Trail (the cemetery where Revere and the Boston Massacre dead are buried -- and yow, there are headstones right flush against the adjacent office building windows; that's what happens when a fairly compact modern city is build on historicity) and the business district where Marcy used to work. And had lunch at the Green Dragon, which was reportedly (according to the placemats, anyway) a favored haunt of many of the Sons of Liberty. It may well be true -- kayt663 in Salem advises me that local Boston lore is often fairly reliable. Local Salem lore, on the other hand ...

In the evening, I hied to East Brookfield to pay a visit to my friends from college, Jamie and Kelly and their seven kids. They have three teenagers, and four Taiwanese special-needs children they've adopted, the fourth only a couple weeks before my visit. And they're, to my eyes anyway, ideal parents -- kind while firm, attentive to the kids' activities while letting them learn through their own discoveries and interactions; handling life through faith, wisdom and humor. (Jamie is probably among the most conservative of my friends, and he's the person this moderate keeps in mind whenever I'm tempted to paint The Right with one brush.)

They gave me much better directions back to Arlington than the ones I'd followed to East Brookfield thanks to GoogleMaps -- their directions, thankfully, did not involve going through the heart of Worcester, or actually going anywhere near Worcester, yay.

DAY SIX (WEDNESDAY, JUNE 16)
Made my way to Wellesley around lunchtime to meet another friend from college, Bill King -- had a decent in unexceptional lunch at someplace called Papa Razi -- and he took me on a Jeep tour of Wellesley and vicinity. There was some large-scale roadwork being done on the Wellesley campus, so he couldn't take me through ... just drove by and invited me to imagine the youthful Hillary Rodham thereabouts. Bill knew some interesting local history, including that of a hamlet/village that had been a Christian Indian community in the late 1600s/early 1700s and a decent model of inter-tribal and white/native harmony ... before it was scuttled by greed, as usual. I've forgotten most of the details, but it was an interesting account.

Then I hooked around the north of Boston to make my way to Salem -- got a bit lost, as a lot of people apparently do on their first visit to Salem (I have a colleague who never could find the House of the Seven Gables, even with all the signs) -- to visit kayt663, a friend I'd met online a few years back, hung out with a bit when I was last in Boston, for the 2004 Worldcon, and then gradually fell out of touch with until the Facebook Era. (For all FB's various annoyances and perversities, I have it to thank for bringing some excellent people back into my life. That goes for you too, mswewh.) We wandered around a secluded local garden, where a stranger promptly gave her a tree; then headed over to Lynn, got ice cream and strolled by the seaside. All things considered, the best of days. (When we got to some large rocks jutting out into the surf, Therese decided she wanted to take some dramatic shots of me in various poses lookin' all windswept and stuff. My FB friends among you have probably seen some of 'em; I may post a couple here sometime.) That evening she made Thai chicken and rice with asparagus, and we tried to jointly improv a story -- like that tandem writers'-group assignment hazmatplaytime had the Hacks do once (which, as I've mentioned in this LJ, led in a roundabout way to my song "Casa Blanca"), only orally. I learned I'm pretty miserable at improv. And her cat tried to lovingly munch on my fingers several times, but apparently she does that to everyone.

And speaking of improv, upon arriving back at the Mahoneys, I saw they had Marcy's keyboard out -- they were at one point thinking of coming to part of Concertino, before Bryan got word of weekend auditions for Deal or No Deal -- and were improvising songs to backing tracks programmed in ... like a song about a worm to the tune of Stevie Wonder's "Superstition." At one point I threw out the topic ("Beans!") and Marcy picked the melody ("Danny Boy"), and Bryan launched into a song more about gas than actual beans but in a traditional Irish style o' lament. This sort of thing is why I keep wanting to get this people into a filkroom.

Ach, that's enough for tonight.

Words: Fables: War and Pieces by Bill Willingham et al. Not quite as compelling as the last collection -- surprising, considering this represented a climax of sorts -- but still solid, with some great moments.
Sounds & Images: "C is for Lettuce" by Worm Quartet
State O'Mind: Content

Haven't had a chance to post since returning home from vacation Monday night. Not that work has been anywhere near as overwhelmingly busy as I had expected: The editor who served as my backup was the Dream Backup, and she had everything ready for me to finish this week's A&E section ... so much so that I was able to get out early (for me) on Wednesday and hie to the Bug Jar for a fairly rare local wormquartet show with Devo Spice (he's on LJ, right?) and Seth Faerglozia of Dufus. However, I do have several hundred e-mails to plow through (fortunately, that works its way down to about 40 once the spam and junk are cleared out), plus I decided to overhaul my entire apartment. Said inspiration struck me Thursday at around, oh, 11 p.m., as usual.

So, in the interests of getting caught up sometime, we resume the vacation posts:

DAY THREE (SUNDAY, JUNE 14)
Travel day, so nothing much to report here. Didn't get on the road until past noon, but made it to the Arlington home of Bryan and Marcy by 8:30 p.m., even with a couple stops and with slowed traffic on the Mass Pike due to what turned out to be a Flaming Car (!) with absolutely nobody making any effort to put it out. Upon informing my hosts of this circumstance, I was told, "Oh yeah, there's four or five flaming cars on the Mass Pike every week." Um, OK.

Avid readers of this LJ (heh) will have read of Marcy and Bryan Mahoney before; they're former colleagues of mine at The Company, fine writers and human beings and among the Mostest Fun people I know. (Marcy very occasionally shows up here as hazmatplaytime.) They had been asking me to pay 'em a visit since they moved to greater Boston in 2006. Finally, this year, I noticed that the northeast's Floating Filkcon was in Worcester. Plus, I had reunited via Facebook with my friend kayt663, who lives in Salem. Plus, my friends Jamie and Kelly were in the process of expanding their family to seven. (They've adopted four children with special needs from Taiwan.) And there were at least a couple other friends in Boston. So I figured to go ahead and use vacation time en masse -- as in, a week and a half -- instead of my usual dribs-and-drabs usage, a weekend here, a couple days there, and so forth. It was a good move; I hadn't been so refreshed and renewed in quite a while, and it's carried over into the work week through to This Very Moment. (Heh, that's not always how vacations work.)

Marcy and Bryan put me up in their guest room on a couple precarious air mattresses -- moving much at all precipates a fall, but it's a small enough room that there's nowhere to fall. And it's the room with the bookshelves! I love being put up in book rooms. A couple years ago, I went to Pittsburgh a day early for Confluence -- there was a housefilk the hosts of which I absolutely forget (one's a harper) and was hosted at the home of Jim and Laurie Mann, in a room with floor to ceiling bookshelves lining all the walls ... and I realized, with admiration, that this was the auxiliary book room, housing anthologies, compilations, periodicals, graphic novels and the like. Heh. Anyway, I made my way through a few of the Mahoneys' graphic novels -- including the first three volumes of Y: The Last Man, which promptly hooked me.

DAY FOUR (MONDAY, JUNE 15)
Bryan worked days through the week -- he's editor of The Lexington Minuteman -- so it fell to Marcy to show me around and about. On Monday, we more or less wandered about Arlington and Lexington. Had an excellent lunch at the Arlington franchise of Not Your Average Joe's (if you're ever there, I would highly recommend their mustard-crusted chicken); browsed about in Newbury Comics (really, a pop-culture mecca in general, with season DVD box sets of pretty much everything that had ever been released); walked about in the memorial park in Lexington on the site of the battle that more or less began the Revolution, with Marcy serving ably as a tour guide; paid a visit to Bryan at his office, which is within spitting distance of the park; wandered into the visitor's center, where I resisted the urge to buy a tri-corner hat; and maneuvered around in the Worst Parking Lot Ever to pay a visit, my first, to Trader Joe's. I want a Trader Joe's in Rochester now. Sadly, the only ones in New York are all downstate.

That evening, the Mahoneys invited their friend Meghan over and introduced me to the ways of the Wii, specifically Boomblox. Much fun, though it would take a lot more Wii-ing to be able to get a complete handle on how to, uh, handle it. (Did respectably, though.)

That's enough for this installment. Now I'm only 12 days behind!!

Sounds & Images: Crowded House on Austin City Limits
State O'Mind: Content

Vacation is winding down -- writing from my friend kayt663's home in Salem -- with plans to get on the road ere 4 p.m. to arrive home while it's still Monday, and get to work Tuesday morning. A visit to the House of the Seven Gables awaits in the meantime, though. (I never knew that was a real place.

So, in the interest of catching up sometime, we resume my account o' vacationness.

DAY TWO (SATURDAY, JUNE 13)
The first several hours of June 13 were spent, of course, on the Relay for Life track, alternately taking the inspiring walk amid the luminaria and chillin'. Once more, my thanks to all who donated, sponsored, walked or even thought about us. When I wonder why I put all the effort into it every year, I'm reminded every year when I watch the survivors take their lap.

After my traditional post-Relay Denny's omelet run and six or so hours of sleep, I took my mother on a circuit of Gananda yard sales, did a last load of laundry, did assorted packing and puttering ... and spent four or five hours at the office, Finishing Up Stuff. Yup, the vacation officially started the day before, but my assorted articles had to be finished: Curiously, I had done the ones for two weeks out, but not the ones that had to be done immediately: Oops. Finished pieces on an astrophotography show, on blues/world musician Taj Mahal (who opened our phone interview "Brother Wheel-ah!") and on Baldbox. And went home and packed. And washed dishes. And packed some more. And tumbled into bed about two hours later than I wanted, and realized there was no way I was getting on the road at 10 a.m. ...

DAY THREE (SUNDAY, JUNE 14)
... chiefly because that's about when I finally got up. *yawn*

The preliminaries done, the exciting stuff awaits (for varying values of the word "exciting"). In posts to come: ldwheeler drinks a Guinness float! ldwheeler buys a snood! ldwheeler wears said snood! ldwheeler is mystified by the layout of Worcester! ldwheeler is mystified by the pronunciation of Worcester! ldwheeler becomes the Golem of Good Fortune! ldwheeler starts an epic battle between two people who don't know each other! ldwheeler looks back and realizes he misspelled his own name three times in this very paragraph! (Since fixed, natch.)

Words: Read a bit of Whitman's Leaves of Grass last night
Sounds & Images: Just came from Concertino, so quite a lot is happily resonating and reverberating. Loved Sunday's Sassafrass concert -- sometime I'd like to see the full nine in a concert setting.
State O'Mind: Appreciative

Greetings to All The People. I haven't been on LJ much of late because there were two or three weeks of feverishly, furiously working to get a couple weeks' worth of work banked so I could go on vacation -- along with Relay For Life preparations -- followed by said vacation, of which I'm currently in the midst. And I've been too busy doing actual vacation-type stuff to spend much time at the keys. (Tomorrow: Concertino!) Major exhaustive post with pictures and stuff will ensue upon my return, of course.

But, as I have a few minutes before my hosts and I depart for dinner, drinks and such like thus, I'll try to begin the Series O' Vacation Posts.

DAY ONE: FRIDAY, JUNE 12
Relay for Life night, so I deliberately slept in -- not too hard, as I'd stayed late at the office filing articles to be used in my absence, including my interview with Cory Wells from Three Dog Night (interesting anecdote about the time the pre-3DN core tried to record with Brian Wilson, but were stymied by Wilson's eccentricity ("he took a walk one day and never came back," which was apparently true both metaphorically and literally) and Mike Love's possessiveness over the creative golden goose). Day was spent puttering, getting my oil and fluids checked, buying bottled water and a pedometer and such like thus, arriving at the Canandaigua Academy track almost exactly at 6 p.m.

Relay night was, for the first time in years, just right weather-wise for a 12-hour overnight meander around the track for the American Cancer Society. Last year, it was canceled by treacherous electrical storms. The year before, it was postponed by treacherous electrical storms. The year before that came gale-force winds, torrential downpours and March-like temps. The year before that, it was sweltering and muggy all evening. So this time -- roughly the 70s all nigh -- was perfect. I ended up with around 18 people on the office team I captained, "Messengers of Hope," and at last glance I think we've raised over $1,200 through registrations, sponsorships, donations and fundraisers. (Great moment of the night: The 4-year-olds in our entourage seeing the row of Port-A-Potties and deciding that they were freezers. To which the rest of us decided they were cryogenic chambers -- the people we watched go in will emerge in 2109, unaged and unchanged.

And this must be cut short, as there is food to be eaten and quality beer to be sipped. So farewell, I say, farewell.

Words: An unfinished manuscript by hazmatplaytime (good stuff), plus almost all the graphic novels in their apartment. I had the good fortune to be housed in the room with all the bookshelves.
Sounds & Images: Lots o' Jonathan Coulton, after introducing my hosts to his oeuvre. (They're particularly fond of "The Town Crotch."
State O'Mind: Grateful, and peaceful. I needed this vacation.

Off to Boston ere long, after coffee, shower and last minute packingishness. There's many a post I've meant to make, but my time has been consumed in trip-prep (mostly in getting a couple weeks' work done ahead of time to avoid overloading my backup). Suffice it to say, Relay for Life was fabulous, meaningful and fun, though I've reached the age where I don't bounce right back from staying awake all night, outside. (If I ever did.)

For those going to Concertino next week, see you there!

For those with Sox-Marlins tickets they'd like to just bestow upon a passing nomad, get in touch ...

There is no reason whatsoever for me to have "The Mighty Quinn (Quinn the Eskimo)" on an endless loop in my head today. No reason at all. None, zip, nada.

But everybody's building big ships and boats. Some are building monuments. Others jottin' down notes.

And in other news, a local newspaper ran a restaurant review of an Indian eatery. They headlined the article "Love me tandoor."

I think they're just trying to curry favor, myself.

Heh. I was proofing an article about a drug bust, and the writer meant to say "peddling heroin." Instead, it came out "pedaling heroine." Which would be Buffy on a mountain bike, or something like that.

That could perhaps be the new copy-editor expletive/oath: "Buffy on a bike!"

OK, I've been here too long.

Words: Recently finished Benighted by Kit Whitfield, of whom I first become aware due to the Skacktivist</b> blog where she comments regularly and I comment once every three or five months or so. Fascinating concept; a mostly fine execution of same.
State O'Mind: Buffy on a bike!

My thoughts on abortion are complicated and probably contradictory -- there's probably some element in 'em to offend everyone -- and quarter till 2 a.m. isn't the time to go into them. But there's one thing I'll say that I think will be fairly uncontroversial in all sane circles:

If you shoot a man dead, you pretty much abandon the right to be called "pro-life."

That is all.

A few observations from a recent shopping trip to Wegmans:

1. There's something conceptually wrong with the concept of "boneless ribs."

2. This amused me for some reason:
Aisle 18B: Cat food and beer
Aisle 19B: Dog food and beer
Aisle 20B: Bird food and beer

3. I'm disproportionately happy to see that the express-lane signs read "10 Items or Fewer" rather than, as in less classy establishments, "Less." We grammar totalitarians take what little victories we can get.

Ummm, Mr. Novelist, sir? I realize that you're one of the Giants of English Literature, and I also realize that you've been dead for at least 150 years or so, so my criticism will largely fall on deaf ears. And I really enjoyed the book otherwise, I did. But ...

Building up to a climax involving a major conflict and then having your main antagonist just ... drop dead?

Was that really what you wanted to do there?

Words: Well, I don't want to give it away. But it rhymes with "Strivin' Moe."
Sounds & Images: Thunder by S.M.V.
State O'Mind: Meh

As late-night variety/talk/comedy show hosts go, I tend to prefer Letterman to Jay Leno -- except on Mondays, when Leno does "Headlines," sharing odd, strange, unwittingly hilarious and/or unintentionally double-entendreds newspaper headlines, cutlines, text; menu items; church-bulletin items; ad copy; and such like thus. I think newspaper people secretly watch Leno Mondays just to see if anything they did made it onto the show. (An area newspaper -- not mine -- somehow escaped Lenofying a few years ago when they ran the headline "CLELAND STUMPS FOR MASSA" about the senator campaigning for a local congressional candidate, which would be an OK headline were Cleland not a triple amputee.)

But I'm one to talk. Because I have the, uh, honor, of having written a headline featured by Leno, roughly a decade ago. It was amid the whole Bill Clinton impeachment imbroglio, and we ran an Associated Press article based on an interview with the president in which he laid bare his soul about the difficulty of the whole situation and the havoc it was wreaking on his presidency and his family life. I used a pithy quote headline -- without even thinking of the double entendre, I wrote, "CLINTON: 'GOD, IT'S HARD.'"

Man, did I hear about that one the next week. Didn't get in trouble or anything; everybody thought it was funny. I was kinda mortified; or as close to mortified as I get, anyway, which means I mildly raised one eyebrow and gave a faint sigh.

So tonight, for his last Monday as host of The Tonight Show, Leno did something of a greatest hits of Headlines, re-presenting some of his favorites from the past 17-ish years. There was a Bush headline. (About his colonoscopy, accompanied by a picture of GWB with his mouth wide open.) There was a Gore headline. ("Gore wows 'em," accompanied by a photo of someone sleeping while Gore speaks.) And -- I have to admit -- I was partly hoping to see my silly Clinton headline again. But no such luck.

So went my brush with nationwide fame.

Words: Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott
Sounds & Images: Synchronicity by The Police
State O'Mind: Silly

Amusingly, in a story about a touring production of "The Wizard of Oz," our spell-check wants to check "Munchkins" to "Mountains."

You're making a mountain out of a Munchkin.

Once more I'm heading up an office team for the Relay For Life's Canandaigua iteration. It's an American Cancer Society benefit in which people walk the track at the local high school for 12 straight hours through the night the night of June 12 and morning of June 13 (not the same people all 12 hours, of course: hence, relay). And once more, I've finally used this newfangled Internet thing to get the team registered online. Which means that people can go to my page and, if so desiring, make a donation or choose to sponsor me, either by flat sum or per-lap. (Though I warn you if you sponsor me per lap: As a team captain, I do stay the whole night, walking on and off, so I usually end up doing around 40 laps or so. You can visit my page here. Right now it says $0, because I just set up the page (and I'm paying my own registration fee in cash).

Many thanks in advance for any of you who choose to donate or sponsor. I do this in memory of and in honor of many family members, friends, colleagues and more who have battled cancer. I do so in memory of my Uncle Don; my cousin Becky (who died at age 12), my dad's co-workers Al and Bob (not to belabor a morbid point, but Bob watched Al's slow, painful decline -- and then, upon his own diagnosis, shot himself) and more ... and in honor of many people I know who are living with cancer, battling it back, surviving ... and doing so with grace, love, dignity and humor.

Logistically, this should be interesting, because my vacation starts that weekend and I'm going to the Boston area to visit many Massachusers and end up at Concertino the following weekend. My current ridiculous plan is to pack that Friday afternoon, get home from the Relay at about 8 a.m. that Saturday, sleep until around 2 p.m., then hit the road and get to the Casa de Mahoney at around 8-ish p.m. A plan doomed to be riddled with Extenuating Circumstances, but that's the current plan.

Words: Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott
Sounds & Images: Various CSNY, Buffalo Springfield, Manassas and Stephen Stills tracks. (Had a brief interview with Stills yesterday in advance of a CSN article I'm writing next week prior to their appearance at the local amphitheater. And of course, on concert night I appear to have a conflict. Carry on, love's coming.
State O'Mind: Appreciative

The actual anniversary passed by a few weeks ago, but it occurs to me that it's been a full year since I took over the A&E gig at The Company, which has mostly consisted of editing -- and serving as primary writer for -- a weekly coming-events section that essentially runs the gamut of A&E/cultural/funstuff: music, performing arts, visual arts, etc. It's been a good year -- a lot of long hours as I've learned the job and my capabilities, and I still haven't entirely learned not to overbook myself in a given week; but much fun. At its core, I get to talk with creative people, write about 'em, and get paid for it.

One of the best side-effects of this job is becoming acquainted with artists, musicians, etc., that I either didn't know of before or knew of only scantily. There've been a lot of discoveries over the past year as I've researched people coming to the area, as well as many a talented local. (I knew the Finger Lakes/Rochester area had an immense, vibrant and diverse arts/music community; I just didn't realize how immense, vibrant and diverse until I started trying to cover it all.

So, in the interests of retrospective, and in the interests of actually kickstarting myself into putting actual posts into this LJ thing, we launch a multiple-day series of Sharing My New Discoveries Over The Past Year, which comes down to Pimpin' Stuff I Like. Some of this stuff is new only to me, like Great Big Sea, but hopefully some of 'em will end up as new discoveries for some of you as well.

We start with Red Molly, a New York City-based folk/bluegrass trio who came to the area for one of the monthly concerts sponsored by the Golden Link Folk Singing Society. Essentially, three folksingers of diverse backgrounds, stylings and temperaments met at the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival, began jamming together and found themselves sympatico enough that a band was born, one that ranges from straight bluegrass to swing/jazz to a cappella folk. With some of the finest harmony singing I've heard in some time. They've rocketed into the Top 2 of Dave's Favorite Female Musical Trios (the other three all read this LJ).

So, here they be, singing "Honey on My Grave":




Enjoy! More to come ...

So in a comment thread on another blog, I made a comment about how whenever I -- in my capacity as a copy editor -- send any messages about grammar, usage, word choice, etc. -- I manage to make at least one typo. I noted this after -- IRONY ALERT -- I used the word "inarticulate" when I meant "articulate."

So someone then posted a link to this poem about the hazards of incomplete proofreading and Spell-Check Gone Rogue. It was perhaps the funniest thing I've seen all day.

Caution for the Squeamish: A good third of the displaced words render their sentences sexual, scatalogical or squicky. Which is invariably what happens with Really Unfortunate Typos. I'll never forget the time I read -- in print, I think -- that an event was "free and open to the pubic." Anyway, this poem is worth it if only for the reference to the Big Three Ivy League schools: "Harvard, Jail and Prison."

Hee, and glee.


Words: Finally finished Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (I was taking it slow) -- very good book; the characters tended to be simultaneously frustrating and endearing. Though my sympathy for Florentino is muted by his actions regarding his ward. Won't say any more, to avoid the dreaded spoilers.
State O'Mind: Amused

Seems like it was just a year ago when I wished a happy birthday to forgetfulness.

Oh, wait -- it was a year ago. Apparently, she's decided to have one every year.

Happy birthday, Annette! Of all the people I've never met in person -- and that's, like, nearly 6 billion people -- you're one of my most favoritest.

Well, a week and a half later, I'm finally getting around to posting my conrep from FilKONtario. There's been a week of scrambling to make up for taking a day off at The Company -- because via the weird calculus at play here, taking one day off leads to being three days behind -- and tax prep, because I am apparently incapable of not leaving such things to the last moment. And now, I breathe.

So ... well, it was characteristically excellent. Time spent at filkcons -- and I count Confluence, which often seems like a filkcon with a really good literary track -- are among my favorite times of the year, particularly since I started participating more frequently. I've rather internalized the speeches Sally and Barry Childs-Helton made at their Filk Hall of Fame induction back in 2003, about filk representing a way of recapturing the artist and creator within each of us ... rather, of the idea that creativity and expression are our birthright as human beings, whatever you believe about human origins. (A large part of what being in the "image of God" means, I've thought and I'm not alone, lies in having the capacity and the desire, the passion, to create.) Seven or so years ago, I wouldn't have believed you if you told me I'd be singing a song I'd written -- like, mere moments before -- in a room with about 30 or so people. But that's what's happened. If nothing else, filk has trimmed away a lot of the self-consciousness that can cling like barnacles.

So ... highlights of the weekend. Most of the big 'uns have already been noted in various people's LJs, but y'know.

1. Phil Mills. philip2637 came into filk not long before I did and has built up a body of work that is varied in tone and content but uniform in its excellence. I always enjoy sharing filkrooms with Phil and janeg -- and getting to hear her sing more often has been a treat as well. This was a Big Weekend for Phil -- a CD release and a songwriting contest victory, plus word that he'll be guest of honor at Con*Cept in Montreal.

2. Randy Hoffman. I've known mrgoodwraith since 1989, when he transferred in to Houghton College, and he's been one of my oldest and steadiest of friends, as well as the one responsible for dragging me into first fandom and later filk. He's one of the most unique songwriters in filk, and his songs only get better in crafting and broader in content/styling as his lyric-bag gets more and more voluminous. (Seriously, have you seen that thing? You could kill a man with it.) Lately, he's been broadening even more, doing more judiciously chosen covers and stretching himself stylistically -- affecting an arrogant growl on T-Bone Burnett's "Humans From Earth" (accompanied by hsifyppah on guitar if I remember correctly) and employing backing tracks to cover several of the FUMPers' songs in an attempt to make some of their deserving material better known among the mainstream filk audience. (There's an oxymoron -- "mainstream filk.") I particularly enjoyed his rendition of lukeski's Battlestar Galactica themed parody of "Bohemian Rhapsody" -- it may have been filled with spoilers, but I'm so far behind on that show that the spoilers don't mean anything to me. *smiles* As noted in a post last week, though, I particularly liked his birthday surprise for Rand Bellavia, a poem from the perspective of a sort of meld of himself and The Thing, addressed to Rand as something of a meld of himself and Mr. Fantastic.

3. Some quiet moments to, say, chat with Rand and erinwrites and assorted others in the consuite between programming items -- aided by the fact that the volunteers kept putting these bowls of chocolate and stuff right in front of us -- about music and comedy and the state of our assorted occupations in the current economy. (Mine's circling the drain a bit, but it's been circling the drain long before the current economic storms.) Unfortunately, we dawdled just a tetch too long there and ended up missing most of "Suburban Travesty," a mystery group of bards who bore somewhat of a resemblance to Urban Tapestry. *smiles*

Awk, this post has gotten too long, so there'll be a Part The Second tomorrow.

Words: Mort by Terry Pratchett
Sounds & Images: Tonight's Lost. Best non-spoilering line: "Ewoks suck, dude."
State O'Mind: Appreciative

A welcome to the LJ realm to my friend kayt663!

And a belated birthday shout-out to slyfoot.

Yesterday would have been my dad's 88th birthday, as well. A full post will ensue, later.

SLEEP, sleep, old sun, thou canst not have repass'd,
As yet, the wound thou took'st on Friday last ;
Sleep then, and rest ; the world may bear thy stay ;
A better sun rose before thee to-day ;
Who—not content to enlighten all that dwell
On the earth's face, as thou—enlighten'd hell,
And made the dark fires languish in that vale,
As at thy presence here our fires grow pale ;
Whose body, having walk'd on earth, and now
Hasting to heaven, would—that He might allow
Himself unto all stations, and fill all—
For these three days become a mineral.
He was all gold when He lay down, but rose
All tincture, and doth not alone dispose
Leaden and iron wills to good, but is
Of power to make e'en sinful flesh like his.
Had one of those, whose credulous piety
Thought that a soul one might discern and see
Go from a body, at this sepulchre been,
And, issuing from the sheet, this body seen,
He would have justly thought this body a soul,
If not of any man, yet of the whole.

-John Donne

Signs are taken for wonders. “We would see a sign!”
The word within a word, unable to speak a word,
Swaddled with darkness. In the juvescence of the year
Came Christ the tiger
In depraved May, dogwood and chestnut, flowering judas,
To be eaten, to be divided, to be drunk
Among whispers; by Mr. Silvero
With caressing hands, at Limoges
Who walked all night in the next room;

By Hakagawa, bowing among the Titians;
By Madame de Tornquist, in the dark room
Shifting the candles; Fräulein von Kulp
Who turned in the hall, one hand on the door. Vacant shuttles
Weave the wind. ...

from Gerontion by T.S. Eliot

Full conreps will follow sometime over the next few days, as I'm almost caught up after taking a three-day weekend for FilKONtario. As usual, taking one day off results in my being about three days behind at the office. Heh -- when I take a week off in June for Concertino and visiting Boston friends, I'll probably return to find that I'm backed up until, oh, the Mayan Apocalypse or somethin'.

In the meantime, I'll just note that one of the side-effects from filkcon attendance is the ... interesting quality of earworms you get for the next week or so.

To cite a couple examples:

Dead people got no reason to live ... (thanks to lemmozine)

and

Zombie zombie zombie/zombie zombie zombie/zaaaahhhhmbeeee ... (thanks to peteralway

Not that this is a bad thing by any means.

Words: Mort by Terry Pratchett
Sounds & Images: Lots of Ani DiFranco (may be interviewing her for The Paper)
State O'Mind: Zombie zombie zombie ...

... and to Rand.

One of the highlights of FilKONtario this past weekend was mrgoodwraith's tribute poem to Rand in Saturday night's Alderwood circle, from the persona of Ben Grimm (the Thing from the Fantastic Four) addressed to the persona of Reed Richards. (erinwrites was, of course, analogous to Sue; while I think Adam was analogous to the Human Torch. I went out to lunch with the four of them Sunday, and figured this must make me Wyatt Wingfoot or something. Nobody will get that, but Rand will.) It was funny and smart and touching and just plain cool.

... and to peteralway ...

Happy birthday this week to mrgoodwraith ...

Back safely & without incident from FilKONtario. It was its usual immensely enjoyable weekend spent among new and old friends, making and sharing music. More detailed details (he said redundantly and redundantly) will follow over the next few days. 'Til then, many thanks to the concom, volunteers and assorted guests for making it, as usual, one of my favorite weekends of the year.

I'll be getting on the road within half an hour or so to run some errands and then hie to FKO -- but first I wanted to post to LJ this funny but also insightful post from the Slacktivist. It involves issues of cultural and religious mores, censorship ... and Journey. Who's cryin' now?

Posted the link to Facebook last night, and added the following personal reflections:

Another excellent -- and very funny -- post from the Slacktivist. It strikes a chord with me (heh -- that wasn't really intended) because I was for a time in my early-mid teens a hardcore fundy in practice, and tended to view spirituality in terms of Things We Don't Do. (A surprise to those of you who know me today as an ale-favorin', rock-n-rollin', occasionally-Dem-votin' malcontent who still loves Jesus.) Not really anyone's fault -- my church tended to the conservative end of the evangelical spectrum, and I was at that age of internalizing without thinking. I don't regret -- and still observe -- much of the biblical teaching, but I think I've been successful in discarding the more legalistic and dualistic attitudes that really didn't last beyond, like, age 15.

Plus, I think it's hilarious that the album with "Open Arms" would be considered contraband. I mean, "Open Arms" *should* be illegal, but for reasons o'taste. (I like "Lights," though, and "Separate Ways.")

Within the half-hour or so, I'll be falling into bed, having finished all last-minute duties at the office and elsewise, with plans to be on the road by at least early afternoon to FilKONtario -- essentially my "home" filkcon since it's only a four-hour drive. Have a couple errands in Rochester, workwise, to take care of on the way, but nothing too egregious -- should arrive well in time for the Tie and Tails (still have to come up with some variation -- maybe I'll just wear my buddy Bolo the stuffed monkey (who really can be worn as a bolo tie) again) anf phillip2637's CD release. Looking forward to that one -- he's a songwriter whose songs and company I've enjoyed immensely since meeting him at an FKO some four or so years back.

As noted a few posts ago, I haven't written anything lately, and the contest topic "Space Games" isn't doing anything for me yet. Though I do have one or two new found-filk bits I may unleash in circles -- including one from Lou and Peter Berryman, among the many new discoveries I've made in my past year as an A&E writer. (I'm planning a series of posts dedicated to a dozen or so new discoveries on my end, ranging from locals to internationally known people I'd never listened to before they came around these parts, such as Great Big Sea.)

And I've carved out enough of a hole -- helped by the fact that it's something of a light week next week, event- and space-wise -- that I don't have to hurriedly get on the road right after the Hall of Fame concert Sunday to get in three or four hours of work before Monday ... I can actually, like, join someone for dinner and take part in at least one or two hours of the Dead Penguin. (I do work Monday, but not until afternoon.) So I be much happy.

And much tired. G'night.

Words: Taking it slow in One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Sounds & Images: The Universe: 14 Examples by Lou and Peter Berryman
State O'Mind: Anticipatory

Who among all y'all may I be seeing?

I missed it, because I'm apparently only capable of remembering people's birthdays by accident (*winks at Wendy*), but this week marked the birthday of ohiblather, one of my favorite people met since I entered this strange and rewarding parallel universe called filk -- and I've liked pretty much everyone.

Debbie combines a multitude of talents and interests with the discipline to follow through on perfecting and pursuing them -- while also managing to be one of the nicer and most welcoming people one would ever hope to meet.

See you at FKO!

State O'Mind: Appreciative

An inspired pairing of bands, which I noted sharing a bill as I updated my A&E section's live-music calendar:

The Quitters, with The Enablers.

Heh.