Arrived safely home from Confluence late last night, and after allotting myself a day to decompress, run errands and so forth, here's the traditional conrep, with LJ tags whenever I can find 'em. As usual, it's not so much a blow-by-blow account of the weekend as it is a recollection of particular moments that stood out.

For the uninitiated, Confluence is Pittsburgh's annual general science-fiction convention, an event that brings authors, editors, musicians (we call it "filk"), artists, and enthusiasts to the Iron City. It's a fairly small, friendly, intimate con (though it posted record attendance this year, I'm told), and my favorite general con. That's due in large part to the concom and PARSEC in general, and in particular mrgoodwraith's efforts in putting together an amazing filk track.

I've posted a few shots from the weekend -- mostly from filk circles and concert slots -- to Flickr; click on the accompanying shot of Devo Spice and ShoEboX to get to my page.



* I arrived the night before the con, as the owner of a club in Blawnox has an arrangement with Confluence to open the club to incoming filkers and their guests. Quite an enjoyable couple of hours; even the drunken (and I mean drunken) regulars at the bar seemed to enjoy it, particularly Peter Grubbs and Sandy Andina's sets. (A lot of Pete's repertoire work out well with Drunken Reg'lars, such as "Wasn't That a Party" and "Help Me Make It Through the Yard.") This weekend was my first exposure to Sandy Andina's work; I was particularly taken with her jab at faceless, malevolent utility companies and such, "Because We Can," and "Molly G." Somewhere in there was a singalong version of bedlamhouse's "Stray Dog Man." It broke up shortly after 11, and I followed mrgoodwraith on a winding journey through the greater Pitt area -- but then it seems any journey through Pittsburgh would be "winding."

* Which brings me to my next point: Pittsburgh itself. For some reason, I've always been rather taken with the Pittsburgh metro area. Couldn't tell you why; I don't know much about its current industry, business climate, politics, and so forth. But I just like its overall look and feel whenever I'm there; it's an intangible. Knowing that one good friend and several others whose company I've enjoyed live there put it up a couple notches as well. If I could choose a place to live, and current familial, vocational, etc. responsibilities weren't a factor, it would probably be Pitt. Maybe the bloom would fade off the begonia after awhile, but you never know.

* And speaking of Pittsbughers, I was most pleased to see that mrgoodwraith finally has a CD out of a sampling of his tremendous and voluminous catalog. (I helped him shlepp stuff around the hotel this weekend, and his bag of lyrics has got to weigh a few pounds.) Since he's given it to retailers and announced it on his LJ, I can safely assume the cat is safely out of the bag and can talk about it. (I got advance notice because of my meager contribution to the project, the small photo on the cover.) It's all a cappella, which is Randy's characteristic delivery, and it contains definitive versions of 17 of his strongest songs written over the course of a decade and a half, such as "Perky Goth," "Khaled," "Naked Mole Rat," "Irreversible," his Dead pastiche "The Caravan" and so forth, and one of his newest, "Space Tourist." While mrgoodwraith is largely known for comic pieces -- a predlicition he himself addresses on "Laughter" -- the disc presents several examples of his songwriting at its most haunting and thoughtful ("My GAFilk Song," "Space Tourist," "Black Operations" and his poem "Before the Candleflower Waltz." Mighty, mighty good stuff.

* Friday morning/afternoon was spent mostly in assisting mrgoodwraith with various last-minute errands: moving sound equipment and discs from his apartment, zipping over several burbs away to find DATs for concert recordings, and so on. Somewhere in there we managed to find time for a quick Chinese-buffet meal with Pete; good shrimp tempura and hot-and-sour soup. It's hard to go wrong with hot-and-sour soup, though some places manage to do so.

* The filk Mad Libs hour was much fun if only to watch [Bad username: mrgoodwraith"] fail to keep a straight face as he collected words (and, finally, give up on any attempt at straightfacing) and sang the results. The victimized songs were Frank Hayes' "Little Furry Animals," Andy Eigel's "Uplift," and a third one I don't recall (something by Kathy Mar, I think); and the main offenders seemed to be Lawrence Dean, Pete Grubbs and me. (I contributed such words as "bolo tie," "schwa," "incontinent," "prairie dog" and "liquify." I never did get around to "versimillitude.")

* The musical-comedy block featuring Rob Balder, Sudden Death and Worm Quartet was a ... unique ... two hours. It was much fun; Confluence likely had not seen its like before. Sudden Death's "Devo Spice" specializes in comedy rap (I particularly enjoyed his song about spam and his rap about how dead rappers seem to get all the breaks). Worm Quartet is actually one man, who calls himself "ShoEboX" -- he's like Weird Al with a strong PG-13 rating and a touch more manic. I like his stuff quite a bit, though I can understand why a little would go a long way with some folks. Among my favorites from his repertoire: "I've Got a Wife" and "I'm Gonna Procreate!" And Rob Balder's always much fun -- "Rich Fantasy Lives" is destined to become a filk anthem on the level of, say, "Sam's Song" and is almost sure to earn a Pegasus one of these years.

* Ookla the Mok was characteristically powerful and excellent -- they say and do a lot of self-deprecation, but they've grown into real pros. And they brought Jonathan Coulton up for one song ... and it must be noted: For two people who really don't look all that much alike, Jonathan and Rand have an eerie resemblance. That doesn't make much sense, but a number have noted it, including them themselves.

* Which brings us to Jonathan himself. I don't think he realized just how much of a splash he'd made through word-of-mouth among the filk/fandom community (Ookla, tfabris and vixyish have been among his most evangelical proponents, though almost anyone who hears his material invariably passes it on to dozens of others) ... until he played "Skullcrusher Mountain" at Friday's open filk and was joined by half to three-quarters of the room. He got the full-immersion treatment over the weekend: "Madiera'd" by markbernstein on Friday; serenaded in Kathy Sands' torchy number about seeking a man among filkers in which she sashays around and about selected filkers in the room on Saturday, etc. He'll quite possibly be coming back for more. And all the people said: "Yay!"

* Picked up some useful advice in a lecture/discussion by writer/poet Timons Esaias titled "Don't Be a Bobblehead: Stupid Things to Avoid in Prose." The particularly bobbleheads he addressed were physical cliches -- the overuse of physical reaction-verbs like "nod," turn," "wince" and so on, along with some writers' obsession with pointing out every character's spacial relationship to the setting and other characters at all times. He attributed the overuse of such devices to two things: the influence of visual storytelling such as TV and film, in which gesture, expression and spacial relationships are important and often integral (and aren't left to the imagination); and a misunderstanding of the advice to "show, not tell." If a writer decides to key a certain physical reaction/tic to particular emotions -- narrowing or rolling her eyes at given times, for example, that's really still telling rather than showing; it's just substitution of a key phrase. It's better to show the character demonstrating his/her reaction through his/her actual actions, not through annoying physical quirks. He also warned against cliches like clenched stomachs and casting eyes -- when a student writes that someone cast their eyes somewhere, he writes on their paper something to the effect of "...and stared back at the empty sockets!" Sarcastic but effective. In my own writing, I'm free of many of the quirks Esaias mentioned -- but I do think I probably overuse the eye narrowing/rolling/blinking/widening, etc. A useful hour, the advice from which I'll share with my writers' group, the No-Talent Hacks. (Name chosen because it was the most descriptive we could come up with. Actually, no.)

* Had a good, albeit all too brief, chat with braider Saturday about learning skills and overcoming one's self-imposed limitations by approaching the matter in reasonable, incremental steps while realizing that it's okay to fail and flail and make mistakes in the learning process. It was quite encouraging for me, for whom guitar is coming slowly ... though it is coming. At any rate, braider is just an inherently fascinating person, and everyone on the planet should give her tea and chocolate right now, this very minute. (Or, if they can't swing that, good vibes and such.) :-)

* Good grief, it's late. I'll finish off the conrep tomorrow, or possibly Wednesday if the workday proves as endless as I suspect it shall. At any rate: Much fun.

State O'Mind: Content