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Mark Mandel has been a fan all his life and an active filker for about 15 years. He affects the self-referentially oxymoronic sobriquet "The Filker with No Nickname". Despite his friends' and family's best efforts, he writes irrepressibly and breaks into song at the most inappropriate times, and occasionally at appropriate ones. He is also the proprietor of a major Steven Brust web site, www.cracksandshards.com. At cons and other fannish events he is usually accompanied by his familiar, a small red-and-white dragon named Loiosh. In the mundane world he is a linguist, who is now living and working in Philadelphia after 20 years in the Boston area. (Please note that "linguist" means "language scientist"; if he had meant "polyglot", he would have written it. [And that is an example of the side of him that calls itself "Dr. Whom". (Should that be "the side of him that calls himself ‘Dr. Whom'"? {Cut it out, boss, you're going overboard! -- Uhhhh... Thanks, Loiosh.})]) Some of his songs can be found at filk.cracksandshards.com. They range over many topics besides sf and fantasy: language (of course), family (he and his wife Rene have two grown children, Susannah and Jeremy), animals (there is usually at least one guinea pig in residence), everyday life (he tries to have one), food and drink (he consumes them), religion (he calls himself an unorthodox Jew), sex (he is male), "and any other topic that may come to mind" (many do). |