>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>
>A Phouka Walks Into A Bar:
>         Conventional Thinking.
>
>         *       *       *
>
>(Just so you know, this week's column is effectively a convention
>review.  If you don't care, please accept my apologies, and I'll see you
>next week.  I now return you to your regularly scheduled program.)
>
>I am a filker.  And dammit, I'm proud.
>
>Every March flocks of strange people wielding guitars, banjos, harps and
>assorted wind instruments descend on the California Bay Area like seagulls
>dive-bombing the beach as they go for a dead whale*.  Why do they do this
>thing?  What drives them on?
>
>Why, Consonance, of course.  The Bay Area's very own filk music
>convention.  A weekend of our own; a brief moment where our tendency to
>sit up until four o'clock in the morning singing about dead puppies and
>Argo's zoning laws isn't just socially acceptable -- it's expected.  There
>are a lot of filking conventions, but this is the only local one.  We're
>very fond of it.
>
>(*Look, it's this year's most disgusting metaphor!  Yay!)
>
>I've been logistics staff at Consonance for the last two years.  This
>means that if something catches fire, I make sure that everyone has
>marshmallows and sharp sticks to roast them on.  I'm not the only
>one: Chris and John O'Halloran also willingly spend the convention
>babysitting the concept of peace and harmony.  It's one of the more
>relaxed conventions I know -- except for misplaced songbooks, broken
>guitar strings and a chronic shortage of water, not much goes wrong.
>
>Maybe that's why I felt relaxed enough to invite a few of my friends --
>who aren't filkers -- to come to the convention this year and see what all
>the fuss was about.  I was originally supposed to do a concert with Our
>Meg: however, my recent bout with pneumonia (the pneumonia won) had left
>me with very little voice to speak of.  Fine.  The concert was cancelled,
>but the people I had invited to come hear it decided to come anyway.
>
>Fools.
>
>And this is why I entered Consonance this year with Chris (the lovely and
>talented Taxi Whore), Jeanne (cute, frazzled, and half-awake at the best
>of times), Amanda (Graduate student in need of a break) and Rebecca (who
>took the train from San Diego) in tow.  None of them had ever been to a
>filk convention before -- they had no idea what to expect.
>
>Pardon me a moment while I laugh hysterically.  BWAHAHAHAHA...okay, we're
>done.  Thank you.
>
>The first hurdle was the registration desk.  It seems simple: you give
>money to the people behind the desk, they give you a badge, you write your
>name (Rebecca, with remarkable aforethought, labeled herself 'Seanan's
>Friend'), and you go.  The trouble is, they litter the desk with stickers
>that you can put on your badge.  It takes the average person about thirty
>minutes to finish fixing their badge.  This is a clever ploy to make you
>stay and talk to the registration staff, who are probably remarkably
>bored.
>
>Eventually everyone's badge had been properly adorned with a variety of
>musical notes, butterflies, bats, flowers, bugs and penguins -- guess who
>most of the penguins were stuck to -- and we were ready to move off into
>the convention.
>
>Now, most conventions rely on a complex and tightly-timed series of
>program events and panels.  If you can't find something to do every minute
>of the day, they reason, the programming staff hasn't done its job.  Filk
>fandom doesn't work quite the same way.  Most of the action at a filking
>con takes place at night, sitting in wide circles in crowded rooms,
>playing their guitars and banging on various percussion
>instruments.  Programming for filkers is largely a matter of giving them
>chairs, water, and a room with good acoustics.  This means that we spend
>an awful lot of time milling around and being glad to see each other, at
>least before we settle down to the serious business of singing.
>
>All the familiar faces were there, along with a few folks that managed to
>surprise me -- it's good to have such an extended family.  After news had
>been exchanged and plans for the rest of the weekend had been sketched
>into place, it was time for the Friday night concerts.
>
>Concerts are about the only really 'solid' programming item that you're
>likely to encounter at a filk convention.  Oh, we have a few panels and
>workshops, but mostly it's circles and concerts.  This batch ranged from
>the semi-traditional (Tuppence, out of Phoenix) to the downright modern
>(Carla Ulbrich, a new face who nearly made me swallow my tongue
>laughing).  After the last performer had finished (and the recording for
>World Dream* -- I'm sorry, Steve, I refuse to spell it 'WorlDream' was
>finished) it was time for the open filking.
>
>(*More on this later.  Much, much more on this later.)
>
>Friday night filking is usually pretty slow at Consonance.  Which was a
>good thing, because my throat was already shredded.  We wound up spending
>a couple of hours in Con Suite, keeping Momma Colleen company, then fled
>for the safety of bed -- and the only good night's sleep we'd be getting
>during the convention.
>
>I am an early riser.  It has long been one of the more annoying things
>about my personality.  Even after only getting five hours of sleep, I
>proved to be unable to stay unconscious much past nine.  Since everyone
>else in sight was sacked out, I decided to get up, go down, and have some
>breakfast -- a free buffet came with the hotel room, and that was a truly
>wonderful thing.
>
>Kathy Mar was also on her way to breakfast; we sat together, and spent a
>leisurely hour talking about carbohydrates (they're bad for you), bacon
>(also bad, but tasty), orange juice and where I should go when I visit
>England next year.  Jeanne and Chris showed up just as we were finishing,
>so I joined them to chat while they ate.
>
>Jeanne was starting to look a little shell-shocked: she was used to
>conventions, sure, but not quite this _sort_ of conventions.  Chris, on
>the other hand, was still relatively fresh -- probably because he had gone
>to bed so early the night before.  Cheater.
>
>Saturday passed pretty quickly, in a flurry of short concerts, long
>conversations and general silliness.  At long last the evening concerts --
>the most anticipated event of the convention -- rolled around.  It was
>time for the Guests of Honor, the Toastmaster and our specially imported
>Interfilk* Guest to get up and shake their bad stuff.
>
>(*More on this later.)
>
>The only problem was, well, the concerts got started a trifle late.  There
>were a lot of reasons for this -- it was no one's fault -- but it meant
>that a reasonably early evening of music and hilarity had been pushed back
>to 'you don't really expect us to be _awake_, do you?'.  assuming no
>further delays, the last group -- Urban Tapestry -- wasn't going to be
>finished until after midnight.  (They actually finished just before two.)
>
>Ah, well.  Time and filk wait for no man.  The concerts began, pushing
>later and later into the evening.
>
>By this point Jeanne, who wasn't used to Filker's Standard Time yet, was
>turning into a small puddle of unconscious brunette.  We shook her awake
>and sent her up to the room, promising to wake her up when Urban Tapestry
>was going to go on.  She went limping off into the night, just in time to
>miss the Interfilk auction.
>
>Interfilk, for those who don't know, is the big filker's
>charity.  Basically, we donate strange, unusual and interesting items,
>which are then auctioned off during the 'intermission' periods of the
>concert program at the various filk conventions.  When I say 'strange and
>unusual', I mean it.  We've had everything from pre-release copies of
>assorted CDs to The Interesting Lemon*.
>
>(*The Interesting Lemon was donated because of its...unique shape and
>properties.  Let's just say that while I won't go into detail, it could
>have been put to good use by the makers of many fine adult films.  The
>sort that you have to show proof of ID before you can rent.)
>
>Interfilk auctions range from the vaguely amusing to the downright
>hysterical, depending on the items to be auctioned and the people that are
>doing the auctioning.  Most of the offerings this time were pretty mild --
>unlike the auction at OVFF, where the truffle-eating auctioneers not only
>raised the prices, but the ambient temperature of the room.  There was,
>however, a lot of assorted chocolate items.
>
>The things that people will do to chocolate never fail to amaze me.  This
>basket contained normal chocolates, sure -- but it also contained
>chocolate soap and chocolate wine.  Things that were never, ever meant to
>be made out of chocolate.  The bidding started fairly low.  Then Chris got
>a good look at the contents, and woke up.
>
>"Sixty," he said.  This was a nice increase -- not too high, but enough
>that the auctioneers were pleased.  For a moment, it looked like he was
>going to secure the Holy Grail of Unusual Chocolate Products.
>
>There was just one problem: Debbie Ohi.  Debbie is the cute, perky
>flautist of Urban Tapestry.  She's friendly, clever, talented -- and
>utterly addicted to chocolate.  To the point of occasional
>obsession.  Trying to take chocolate away from Debbie is like trying to
>take the new Harry Potter book away from your nine year-old nephew: it's
>just not happening.  Give it up.
>
>"Eighty," said Debbie.
>
>"One hundred."
>
>Everyone else had dropped out of the auction by that point, and were
>watching in awe as Chris and Debbie pushed the cost of a bag of chocolate
>up into the stratosphere.  Chris was winning, for a few brief, shining
>moments.
>
>And then the Debbie Ohi Chocolate Conspiracy kicked in.  Because Debbie's
>chocolate addiction is so well known throughout the filk world, other
>filkers will sometimes work to _get the chocolate for her_.  This is
>partially because she's cute, and partially because it's funny.  All
>around the room voices started to chime in, offering to contribute more
>and more money to give Debbie the chocolate.
>
>Chris eventually gave up, allowing Debbie the dubious pleasure of paying
>approximately twenty dollars an ounce for her chocolates.  You gotta love
>charity auctions.  Several items later the auction was done, and it was
>time to set up for Urban Tapestry.
>
>The ambient temperature in the room had been dropping steadily for the
>last several hours; at this point, it felt a lot like my unheated living
>room on a Tuesday morning.  Callie -- one half of Echo's Children, and a
>very sweet lady in her own right -- was turning slowly blue.  I passed her
>on my way out of the room, and asked if she needed me to bring her a
>sweater.  Her response was a rather emphatic 'yes', and once I had checked
>to be sure that all my limbs were still attached, I took off for my hotel
>room.
>
>I can make pretty good speed when I want to.  Having woken Jeanne,
>convinced her to put on a pair of pants and grabbed the requested sweater,
>I came running back into the concert room just in time to catch the end of
>Urban Tapestry's first song.  This amazing piece of lyrical poetry ran:
>
>         "And it's one two three
>         The kids love the monkey;
>         Four five six
>         The monkey's got a hockey stick.
>         Seven eight nine
>         We're having a good time, yeah."
>
>How can you go wrong at a convention where this can greet you as you enter
>a room?  It has kids!  It has monkeys!  It has a hockey stick!  Everything
>is going to be just fine.  The monkey will protect you.
>
>At the end of the song, Jodi informed us that this had become 'the
>good-bye song' -- when leaving friends, they tended to sing about the
>monkey, because it was such a happy note to end on.  This seemed pretty
>sensible to me.  It's hard to be sad about leaving when the people that
>you're trying to leave are happily telling you about a monkey with a
>hockey stick.  Go, monkey.
>
>The rest of the concert was divine; they played old songs and new songs,
>things I'd heard and things I hadn't.  And when it was over we cleared the
>room, broke down the sound equipment, and set up our circle, ready to sing
>and play the night away.
>
>It was a beautiful night for a filksing.  We sat up until five in the
>morning, singing and playing.  The Bonhoffs sang things both silly and
>sublime; all of the convention Guests put in an appearance at some
>point; Kathy contributed her 'Chick Joke', and Carla Ulbrich showed up to
>sing several sharp and pointed songs.  Even Paul Kwinn showed up,
>startling us all.
>
>Now, Paul and his lovely wife, the esteemed Beckett Gladney, have recently
>made More People.  These More People -- who have taken the form of twin
>boys, currently approximately three weeks old -- also put in an appearance
>at the convention, towed by their parents.  Now, children this small are
>very cute, mostly because they have two settings: on (probably screaming),
>and off.  Beckett had somehow managed to set her children to 'off' for the
>duration of the convention, allowing everyone to coo about how adorable
>and angelic they were.  Beckett just smiled.  It's probably a good thing
>none of us are mind readers, since I doubt any mother of twins is thinking
>kind thoughts when told that she 'should have two more just like them'.
>
>Beckett and the children had vanished shortly after Paul's afternoon
>concert; most people assumed that they had left the premises.  However,
>that night, there's Paul in the filk circle, just as pleased as
>punch.  They had taken a hotel room so that Beckett could stay at the
>convention, and so that one or both of them could attend the Urban
>Tapestry concert: proof that Paul is a) smarter than the average bear, and
>b) pretty damn dedicated to this crazy thing that we call filk.  Go, Paul.
>
>Now, as noted before, I didn't really have much of a voice this
>convention.  As a consequence, I really hadn't been singing -- thus
>proving that I do, occasionally, show signs of common sense.  Even when
>the theme of the circle swung briefly to ose (also known as 'songs that
>make you want to slash your wrists' -- my favorite kind), I had managed to
>keep my mouth shut.
>
>Then we started singing about sex.  And somewhere right in the middle of
>all this, Paul played three bars of a song, looked up long enough to catch
>my eye, and said "Well?".
>
>I am now officially a melody slut.  I don't think I've ever crossed a room
>that fast.
>
>One song about modern relationships, sex toys and blow-up girlfriends
>later, I was pretty much ready to call it a night.  The circle was
>starting to shrink as dawn threatened; Jeanne had wilted still
>further; and while I've been known to greet the morning following a long
>night's filking, it isn't necessarily my favorite thing to do.  Off to bed
>I went, with a substantial group trailing after me.
>
>Of course, I still couldn't sleep.  There's a law.  After about three
>hours, it was time to get up and get active, heading down to breakfast and
>early morning kibitzing with all those other fools that were awake before
>noon at a filk convention.
>
>Sunday pretty much passed in a blur.  Songs, laughter, friends; water
>services, dealer's room madness, and watching Jeanne blow a hundred and
>fifty dollars on CDs; checking out of the hotel room, searching for
>everyone's missing things, making sure Rebecca had everything she needed
>to get to the train station, and one frantic trip to McDonalds for lunch
>before the miniconcerts and one-shots.
>
>But the day ended.  The day always ends.  People were running out into the
>stormy outside world -- seventy mile-per-hour winds had grounded a lot of
>planes, and made the roads a little difficult to navigate -- and waving as
>they went, taking off again for whatever life they lived on the
>outside.  We were done.  For another year, we were done.
>
>And just so you know -- Jeanne bought too many CDs.  Rebecca learned too
>many choruses.  Amanda sang in open circle...and Chris is already talking
>about OVFF.  We win.
>
>Time to go.  With the rain coming down on all sides, I hoisted my songbook
>under the relatively waterproof hem of my lab coat and walked out of the
>hotel, leaving my filking friends behind until the next convention.  There
>will always be tapes, recordings and house filks -- but an awful lot of
>people will be awfully far away.
>
>And there's always next year.
>
>Because it's one two three, the kids love the monkey...
>
>         What does this button do?
>
>Seanan McGuire.  3/5/01.
>_____________________________________________________
>'A Phouka Walks Into A Bar' is a non-commercial humor column, written and
>distributed for entertainment purposes only.  If you feel that you have
>been added to this list in error, please email Seanan McGuire at
>delirium@xocolatl.com.  The contents of this column are (c) Seanan
>McGuire, 2001, and may not be forwarded or distributed in any form without
>this notice.  Where's my iguana?