Archive for October, 2013
Henches get sashes! As is required by Guild law, of course. Well, uniforms. Sashes count.
These are of course for the GeekGirlCon ninja show, 2pm(ish) Saturday, GeekGirlCon. Not sure where they’re putting us yet, but look for it – it’ll be a show. 😀
I’m a sucker for shiny fabrics, so a new costume is in the works for the 2pm-ish Saturday ninja show at GeekGirlCon.
So this weekend at GeekGirlCon I’m doing a 5-song mini-concert, as a ninja show, at the con. And I really, really need a couple of people who want to play Henchies, get into a fight with a superhero, and lose. It’s part of the show.
I have one, but I need at least two more. It is acting, but there’s no lines to learn, and it’s comedic – you don’t actually have to know how to fight. You’re supposed to lose, after all. XD
While we have permission to do this, this isn’t an official event, so I can’t get you passes or anything. I bought my own membership a while ago.
Please, please, please contact me if you want to play this part. We’re going to rehearse once, this week, and then just show up and do it.
If you are, and you would be willing to take on a short and fairly simple acting role (as a henchie) as part of an unofficial/ninja concert, contact me as soon as you see this!
There’s an Avengers meme where people do pop culture and news magazine covers set in the Avengers world. It’s cool and stuff, but I don’t read those magazines.
I read this, though:
They’ve changed style since then, but I wanted it after Iron Man 2, or more specifically, right after Tony Stark’s testimony to Congress, so I used their old style.
Fonts aren’t quite right. But they’re the closest I have. I mucked with the kerning to get closer.
So, right, where was I? Oh right, VCON!
Saturday morning, I popped up early for more kaiju programming – this time on monster anatomy and alternate worlds. But being a bit sleepier than I’d expected, I arrived a bit late – still, the pieces I saw were fun. Then the songwriting workshop, which I mentioned previously, rehearsal for the show, a very late lunch/early dinner and some hanging out, then off to set up for the show!
The Supervillain Origin Story set seemed to go over well; my goal is to get you on the supervillain’s side here, and while it’s still missing one part of the story, I think it’s starting to jell. A lot of people were nodding where I want them to during the Rant Segment, which is definitively a good sign.
There may be an unofficial/ninja performance of this at GeekGirlCon, by the way. Just sayin’.
Then I did a second mini-set, this one all piratey! And I have to say, it is so nice to be doing “Last Saskatchewan Pirate” where people both know and do the callbacks. I encouraged them starting the song, and when hitting that first chorus and having the crowd shout back the response lines? That felt nice. You guys were great.
For encore I did an a cappella – because I don’t have chords yet – of “You Can’t Get a Good Kamikaze in Vancouver.” I know I have at least some video and some audio, so we’ll look at how that goes – and thank you so much, VCON Tech Crew, for setting up my camera for me. That was awesome of you.
Then! Con suite and room parties and hangouts and all the rest. The only downside of the con suite this year was that they ran out of cider crazy early, and I ended up indulging in the dubious pleasure of a fake highball made of Canadian Club and Diet Pepsi, emphasis on dubious and fake.
Needless to say, a kamikaze was out of the question. XD
Sunday! Up at a leisurely pace to hit the art show, finally, where I bought this:
Once again, the art show? Lots of 3D, an awfully good standard of work, most of it more F&SF-y than the lamp above (including most of the other lamps by the same artist). Honestly, it’s the best art show I see at a convention.
“What is Filk?”, my noon panel, saw only slightly more audience than panelists actually kind of stay on topic and get reasonably educational. Then a quick bite and a run down to my personal VCON highlight every year: the Turkey Readings.
Now, you have to understand what this is: it’s “straight” readings of terrible fiction, acted out by members of the audience, with other members of the audience bidding to stop or continue the action. ALL BIDS MUST BE PAID; it’s a fundraiser for the Canadian Unity Fan Fund, which pays to fly fans across the continent to opposite-side conventions.
And that’s all nice, but the best part is the terrible, terrible acting (I’m becoming a regular!) and the terrible, terrible pain. Perry Rhodan books are on the literate end of the scale here, people. It is not a pretty sight.
But it is hilarious.
Anyway, then! Closing ceremonies and the dead dog party. VCON knows how to throw a proper dead dog, I have to tell you. I started to fade around 2am but then people got out instruments in one room and a few of us did some serious jamming until 3:30 when I finally called it a convention. (They really liked my treatment of SJ Tucker’s “Come to the Labyrinth.” Quite different to hers, her fans who’ve heard me do it call it the Led Zeppelin version, even acoustic. Fair cop.) They also sell pre-reg for next year, and I got that sorted out.
After that, it was all sleeping late and Vancouver errands and a really excellent lunch with friends (Hi Geri! Hi Kate! Hi Angela! Hi Lara!) and acquisition of bagels and cider. The pleasant trip home was marred only by another terrible interaction with American customs – I think the last trip where I had to travel by car being unexpectedly pleasant, I had been lulled into a false sense of security; this was a bracing reminder that no, they are just awful – that at least had the benefit of being relatively brief.
Next year’s VCON will also be Canvention! Given that this VCON was of unusual size by itself – my badge had a four-digit number and I’ve never seen that before – next year should be quite the event. They’re changing hotels (again…) for it, which is a shame, because as I told one of the VCON concom at the dead dog: this hotel’s layout is confusing. I like it! Because despite it being confusing the social flow worked really well.
And that counts for a lot.
Next up: GeekGirlCon! And a ninja show! But you didn’t hear that from me – you’ll hear it from me next week. 😀
I’ve been getting back up to speed in sewing – ramping up for some costume changes, Solarbird the Lightbringer needs a new outfit – and made a Pacific Rim Pan-Pacific Defence Corps purse/bag yesterday afternoon.
Patch detail. Silver highlights added to match better with silver in ribbon.
Ribbon detail
This is the third I’ve made in this style – I made a green one yesterday, and a red one a few weeks ago. This one took about four hours; the previous, a good solid seven hours; the first one, I don’t know, but it was several hours across a few days. I still want to make a blue one, using the Dresden Codak “Cyborg Pride” patch I have from the Kickstarter. But I’m lacking a zipper and a strap.
I think I’m getting back into the swing of this.
Experiencing VCON from the programming side… isn’t all that much different to experiencing it from the attendee side. Which is good, since I love attending the convention and didn’t want to lose that part.
Anna and I drove to Vancouver – and yes, we did go to Vancouver, even if the hotel was in Richmond – which we never do. I vastly prefer to go by train, but with all the cargo we had this year? If you’re bringing me in to do panels and a show, I am coming prepared. Handouts, multiple costume changes, gear for the show, bits to show during howto panels, extra instruments to be extra lively at panels – I don’t screw around.
Programming front-loaded me pretty solidly, with three presentations and panels on Friday. From 6-8pm I was talking about building an audio kit on the cheap and, with the help of Joe Fulgham from The Caustic Soda Podcast, the Home Recording 101 panel. We had a funny moment when a few people showed up asking where the knitting panel was – they came back a couple of times until we all figured out what was going on.
Bloginhood gave some very positive feedback, and yeah, I did kind of go off briefly on condenser vs. magnetic-field-vibration microphone head technologies, but dammit, how are you going to do mad science if you don’t know how these things work? Still, I can probably save that for second quarter.
After that, I hopped over to the Kaiju Konfessions Monster Movie Sing-A-Long, which Stan Hyde runs most(?) years, with updates and new material. Stan is a monster kaiju fan (ar ar ar) and really, really knows his kaiju flicks; he’s a lot of fun to listen to. I also ran into Jax, who came as a late-80s Software Pirate, and who lugged a (working!) Commodore SX-64 around all weekend and set it up for games several times.
Friday night’s “Collaborative Filk Creation” panel mostly just turned into a jam, but really, isn’t that kind of the point? I met Greg Cairns there, and we ended up hanging about some at music panels and jamming in the con suite on Sunday. He’s a guitarist and vocalist, and also does DJ work on the side.
My biggest worry on Saturday – the Songwriting Workshop – actually went really well. I’d never hosted one of these before, but had three people (of the four maximum allowed), so it took the form of a presentation followed by work on individual songs. Since it’s an F&SF kind of crowd, that meant I could talk wave physics, so I did. Also maths. I went in all I DO WHAT I WANT and fortunately the audience turned out to be quite receptive. XD
Also, Conflikt have asked me to rerun it at their convention in January, and I’ve said yes. You’d almost think I was getting a reputation for songwriting or something. ^_^
This has got awfully long, so I’m going to post the next part tomorrow.
Outside the lair right now? Lightning and heavy hail.
This has been a very successful experiment.
I’m writing up a VCON post-con report for tomorrow. This was also a very successful experiment.
Off to VCON! A reminder of my schedule:
That’s a big, big room they’ve given me on Saturday night. C’mon out and fill it!
Since I’ll be doing a couple of technical presentations today (scroll down to this post to get the handouts), here’s a nice presentation on digital audio processing, on the waveform level. There are other demonstrations I’d like him to include, but there are already many, and it’s quite interesting no matter how you look at it. Enjoy!
THE NEW SINGLE
 |
