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News
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| Rule Britannia |
07 Feb 2010 02:04pm |
 Hello from the dead dog (er, dead mouse) filk at the UK Filk Con!
We've had a fantastic weekend, we've been treated extremely well by our hosts, and we had great fun at each of our concerts. There were some technical troubles with the sound system during the second concert, but everything got sorted out in the end and everyone enjoyed the set. Some kind compliments from Smac after our second concert gave me a warm fuzzy and meant a lot to me.
For both concerts, though, we had to perform under duress: We both have colds. But Vixy, ever the professional, was able to sing right through her cold and blow everyone away (in the good way). I was able to pull off the counterpoint vocals in Companion, but that's about my limit. There's some doubt whether Vixy will be able to sing at all in tonight's circle; I might read the Blimp story when it's my turn in the Bardic circle, since I can't really sing.
Speaking of circles, Saturday night's filk circle was one of the best filk circles I've ever been in, the quality of the songs and performances were top notch. My favorite moment involved Christo and Tim Walker dueling on recorder Ian Anderson-style. Tonight's circle is going well so far, we shall see if it lives up to last night's standards. I'm told it will. It's looking good so far: Christo just sat down next to us.
Tomorrow we get on the train to King's Cross, then tube to Heathrow, then home, and try to go to work on Tuesday, completely jet lagged. Erk. Wish us luck!
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| At Con... |
05 Feb 2010 03:50pm |
We're safely ensconced at the UK Filk Con, and we've attended the opening ceremonies and evening concerts. We were getting ready to head back out for the open filk, then realized that we're both sick and need to get over our colds, at least partially, if we're to put on a set of successful concerts tomorrow and the next day. So instead of going to open filk, we're retiring early so that we can get the extra sleep we need. See you all tomorrow!
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| London Done. |
04 Feb 2010 04:08pm |
We saw ALL of London.
(from the Eye)
London awesome. Crown jewels are neat. Hosts treating us well. Con starts tomorrow. Hope we're ready.
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| Today I trod upon Charles Darwin. |
03 Feb 2010 03:53pm |
...and many other incredibly important people buried in Westminster Abbey. I saw the burial place for Isaac Newton. (And also a few people who were kings or queens or some such, I don't remember.) What an amazing place. So beautiful, so completely cluttered with incredible artwork and amazing atmosphere.
Other things we've done so far during our trip to London and the UK Filk con:
- Ridden the trains, buses, and the Tube.
- Saw an incredible concert.
- Ate and drank in a great English pub. Sausage!
- Shopped at Harrod's
- Walked in an English rain.
- Saw the most awesome comic book store
- Took a million pictures (to be posted later).
- Wikistalked the band getting on the plane ahead of us because they looked like a heavy metal band and I glimpsed the drummer's name on his boarding pass. (Vixy's comment as I showed her the Wikipedia article in the palm of my hand while gesturing subtly at the people in front of us on the jetway: "I love living in the future.")
- Force-adjusted ourselves to the new time zone in one night.
- Got our picture taken at platform 9.75 (and also came and went into London via that same train station).
- Got treated extremely well by our hosts, Mike Whitaker and Rika Koerte.
We've still got another London day to go, and we're hoping it will involve the Tower of London and the British Museum. Then off to the convention on Friday. I suppose we should come up with a set list and rehearse? I've come down with a cold, so I don't know if I'll be singing in the sets or not, but I'm relatively sure Vixy will be singing. :-)
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| I am the crazy. |
01 Feb 2010 12:04am |
 I'm gonna go get the hotel cart in a moment to get our gear out of the filk room here at Conflikt in just a moment. We're gonna get ready for our flight to the UK pretty soon so we need to try to get some brief sleep soon.
It's been a fantastic con. Best Conflikt yet. No room to list all the good stuff, so here are some personal favorite highlights:
- ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) tereshkova2001's first time singing in a filk circle.
- Tom Smith's GOH concert which blew the roof off the place.
- Andrew Ross's fantastic toastmaster concert, and getting to participate in it.
- Getting to participate in CD Woodbury's fantastic concert on Friday.
- House Cerulia girls doing parody songs either about Vixy or to the tune of her songs.
- Getting to sing with Alec for the first time.
- A set of live recordings made by John Seghers, culled from some of our shows this year, fetching a wonderfully hefty sum in the Interfilk auction. (UK folk: You get your shot at the same recording for your Filk Fund this coming weekend, get those "pounds" of yours ready.)
- Playing with Betsy in circle and on stage again.
Really tired but really happy. Can't wait to see how the rest of the week plays out.
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| Ye olde Conflikt! |
27 Jan 2010 03:48pm |
We've got Conflikt this weekend! I'm really looking forward to seeing everyone there again. Although Vixy is the programming chair this year, somehow Vixy & Tony don't have a scheduled concert. Hmph. What good is it having Vixy on the concom if you can't abuse the privilege, I say? Ah well, maybe someone else on the schedule will meet with, shall we say, an unfortunate "accident", which will leave a convenien- er, tragic hole in the schedule. In the meantime, we've got plans to help out other great folks onstage, and of course we'll be at all the open filk circles in the evenings.
We're crazy, though, because we've also been frantically preparing for the UK filk con this week. After we finish up with Conflikt's smoked salmon filk in the wee hours of Sunday morning, we get to have a short nap, then re-pack to get straight on a plane to London! There, we'll be picked up by members of Fleetfoot Mike, who will host us for our first overseas Guest of Honor appearance. We're very excited! And, did I mention, crazy?
There's a certain amount of irony here, though, in that the name "Conflikt" was chosen partly because, when a PNW filk con was first envisioned, it was discovered that no matter which month we chose, it would conflict with another filk-friendly convention on the calendar. We settled on the January/February cusp, because the closest conflicting convention (the UK filk con) was the one that was geographically farthest away. That way, the reasoning went, the people most likely to attend the UK filk con would be different people than the ones most likely to attend Conflikt, and vice-versa.
*facepalm*
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| Jobs in the future! |
18 Jan 2010 11:29am |
 My company is hiring for a lab manager and an intern, as well as some sales positions. My company pays well, the atmosphere is relaxed and positive, and I like the people I work with. I get a decent referral bonus, so ping me if you want me to submit your resumé for you.
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| Surrealism |
10 Jan 2010 04:26pm |
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Surrealism: Working on edits to "Salad of Doom" on the laptop, while the rest of the Agoranauts watch Iron Chef.
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| Ah. |
28 Dec 2009 10:41am |
It's been a good Christmas so far... and there's more to come.
It started with picking up Seanan at the airport on Christmas day, and having a great rehearsal with Betsy. The show on Saturday at Wayward was incredibly fun, and I was amazed to see how many folks came out to see us on the day after Christmas. Thanks everyone for coming!
We have a house full of loved ones now, with gfish now permanently back home, and tereshkova2001 is returning tomorrow to make it a complete set. It's warm and cozy and geeky.
Because everyone was scattered about and doing things on the traditional Christmas day, we're saving our official Agora household Christmas for tomorrow. Tonight? GORN CANNON!
Here's a fun Christmas story. Well, fun for me anyway:
We're all sitting around the TV, watching "Die Hard" because Seanan hadn't ever seen it. Plus, it's a Christmas movie. A completely different kind of Christmas movie than Grinch or Wonderful Life, but a Christmas movie nonetheless. Plus, Alan Rickman. You can't go wrong with Alan Rickman. (Side note: We all want a sweatshirt now.)
So we're watching it from a DVD, which is playing on the Playstation 3. The PS3 is great for watching DVDs in terms of sound and picture quality, but the pain of having to use the PS3 game controller to pause or rewind a DVD is nearly unbearable. When you pick up the controller, it's either already powered itself off to save battery charge, or you accidentally bump one of its soft finger triggers and inadvertently skip forward a chapter.
We've got a fantastic universal remote, but the Playstation doesn't have an infrared transceiver, so you can't use the remote with it. Each time someone curses at the PS3 controller, I have to explain that I need to get the proper "doohickey" (technical term) that lets me control the PS3 videos with the remote.
So Vixy takes a present out from under the tree and makes me open it, despite my protests that it's two days early, since we're not doing presents until Tuesday. And what do you know, it was an honest to goodness doohickey!
After industrial-lasering the blister packaging open, I was worried about having to interrupt the playback of Die Hard to make the doohickey work. I figured it would need some kind of setup or configuration. But the amazing thing is, I plugged it in during the movie and it just worked. Plug in the doohickey, and suddenly I can pause and unpause the movie in progress without touching the game controller. That's what amazed me: A tech gadget that actually Just Worked Exactly Like You'd Expect It To. No rebooting the console, no having configure it via setup menus, nothing. Just plug it in, and poof it works. Now that's a good OOBE. (We're going to disregard for a moment that a better OOBE would have been for the PS3 to have had an IR transcever built-in in the first place.)
Vixy is made of awesome. But you all already know that.
Anyone else have good OOBE's this Christmas?
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| Thanks everyone! |
23 Dec 2009 01:43pm |
Thanks, everyone, for coming to the Wayward last Saturday and making it a great night for us all. We had a fantastic time! Angelica and Athrylis had a great time and were so happy to play for everyone.
Remember that we've got Seanan coming up at Wayward this Saturday!
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| Wayward Times Two! |
11 Dec 2009 09:43pm |
 Reminders of upcoming gigs!
Saturday, December 19th, 7pm
Vixy & Tony are playing at Wayward Coffeehouse with Sunnie and Betsy, as well as very special guests, the wonderful and sweet ASH Productions! They're making a special trip up here to Seattle just to sing with us. They're just a delight to watch. Come out and see us all play together! Details here.
Saturday, December 26th, 8pm
Vixy & Tony will be the backup band for Seanan McGuire. You will get songs, and likely readings from her recently-published novel Rosemary and Rue and its upcoming sequels. Again, we will be taking over Wayward Coffeehouse for this purpose, and again, she's making a special trip to Seattle for this. Don't miss it! Details here.
Then it'll be January, and time for Conflikt, followed immediately by the UK Filk con! Whew, what an exciting winter we've managed.
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| p/g |
01 Dec 2009 01:03pm |
Orycon was great! There were lots of good friends and lots of good music.
Our concert went quite well, despite struggling with some minor audio technical problems during the first few songs of the set. Fortunately, we worked out the technical issues, thanks to Frank Hayes stepping up and being a great roadie, and thanks to the fact that I can play really loud if I need to when the amp cuts out. We did a mix of original songs and covers; here we are covering our friend Seanan's song Dear Gina.
Update: The rest of the videos that Rhaevyn Fae shot of us at Orycon are here.
I had Marian Call briefly using Monkey Brains Studios last night to add a few extra tracks to her current album project. The musicians were herself, her brother, and her Mom. Marian played toy piano. Her brother played banjo, trumpet and nose trumpet, and her Mom played flute and turkey baster.
How do you play a turkey baster? You fill it part way with water, blow across the top and squeeze the bulb, and you get a sound that's halfway between little brown jug and slide whistle. How do you play a nose trumpet? You remove the plungers from the valves, then position your nose across the holes in the tops of the valves, with one nostril blowing across each of two valves. This makes a nice whistly chord. I love having a studio.
Tonight, I play guitar for Marian at The Mandolin Cafe in Tacoma, starting at 7pm. Please come! It's going to be great, and she's got some wonderful new songs for you to hear.
Vixy and I plan to start recording for our next album fairly soon. I need to finish up mixing a few of Sooj's songs that we recently recorded at Monkey Brains first. A few of the songs from these sessions are already done and are available: Lucia, September, and most recently Were-Owl. I'm very proud of the work we've done on these songs, and I can't wait to finish the rest of them and show them off.
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| Orycon! |
27 Nov 2009 05:46am |
Vixy & Tony are off to Orycon today! We have a concert on Saturday night. Will we see you there?
Remember they are in a different hotel this year.
I have only ten SMS messages left on my 200-message plan this month. Partly a side-effect of all that coordinating with Hank Green for that show last weekend (which was awesome, by the way). I usually use text messages for at-con coordination with people, but that'll run me out of messages real fast. So, um, voicemails only for this con, please. (Insert rant here on how evil it is for companies to charge extra for SMS text messages when there's no remaining technological reason to do so.)
Thanksgiving was great, and I have much to be thankful for this year. If you're reading this, you're very likely one of the people I'm thankful to know.
Love to everyone. See you at the con!
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| Hank's Venue |
18 Nov 2009 02:56pm |
There is a venue! Here's Hank Green's official announcement.
A complete lack of free places in Seattle meant that he opted to rent a community center and ask for donations at the door, which should work out great, it always does. The place he really wanted was already booked, but the one he got on short notice is really nice. You might remember it as the location of that great Wendy Rule/Skinny White Chick show from September of last year. It only holds 150 people, though, so come early! Show starts at 6pm this coming Saturday, November 21st, at the Sunset Hill Community Center, 3003 NW 66th St, in Ballard.
Rumor has it that Molly Lewis will be there, too! You might remember her accompanying Jonathan Coulton on Ukelele at recent Seattle shows at The Moore and The Triple Door.
In the meantime, please come see me and Marian Call on Thursday night at House Cerulia or Friday night at Cafe Allegro in the U-District. All of these shows are going to be great! I'm really excited!
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| A call to arms! Or at least fingers. |
17 Nov 2009 01:13pm |
Thanks everyone, for coming out to the house concert at Cerulia last Sunday! We had a fantastic time, and I was especially glad to share the stage with CD and Brooke. Remember that I'm playing guitar for Marian Call this Thursday evening, same place!
Speaking of gigs, I've got a friend of a friend, musician/blogger/environmentalist Hank Green, who needs help finding a venue. He's been touring around, playing at colleges, parks, community centers, that kind of thing, doing free shows. He's been finding places to play, mostly playing it by ear and getting lucky. He's coming to Seattle this coming weekend, November 21st-23rd, and would like to find a place to play that will handle about 100-200 people on short notice, somewhere hopefully indoors out of the rain.
I know of a lot of great places, but none who can handle that many for *free*. Our fallback position is to crash GasWorks, but I don't know if that'll work out, so we'd like to find something better. He's been trying to get something worked out at UW, which would be the most ideal, but the short notice is hampering him in those particular efforts. (If you've got an "in" at UW, speak up!)
Please reply with suggestions and ideas! I'll point Hank here to reply to questions and such.
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| Schedule update |
09 Nov 2009 03:40pm |
It's been a good Fall season for us so far. Good times with good friends and loved ones. Staying employed, knock on wood, and staying generally healthy, knock on wood. Gorgeous fall colors around town, and the rain has officially settled in to Seattle for the season.
We've got gigs coming up, including a new one just announced on the day after Christmas:
Sunday, November 15th
Vixy and Tony, with violinist Sunnie, and cellist Betsy will be playing at House Cerulia this coming Sunday afternoon. We'll be welcoming special guest CD Woodbury, a guitarist with more chops than a butcher shop. We might even welcome yet another super special guest to play with us at some point during the evening, come find out how the heck we're going to have six people performing in that living room and still have room for an audience. Speaking of which, if you're planning on coming, please RSVP to House Cerulia as soon as possible so that they know how many people to plan for. Click here for more details.
Thursday, November 19th, Friday, November 20th, Tuesday, December 1st
Also coming up at Cerulia House, I'll be playing guitar for Marian Call on the Thursday following the Vixy & Tony concert. I'm also playing guitar for her at Cafe Allegro on the 20th, and in Tacoma on December 1st. She's awesome, of course, and there are some great new songs in her set list, so come see us play! Hit up her page for all the details.
Saturday, November 28th
Orycon is coming! Are you ready? Details here.
Saturday, December 19th
Vixy & Tony return to Wayward Coffeehouse, again with our own personal string section, but this time welcoming very special guests, our friends ASH Productions, making a special trip up to Seattle just to play with us. Don't miss this rare opportunity to see these sweet, wonderful sisters blend harmonies as smooth as silk. Details here.
Saturday, December 26th
Just announced! Vixy & Tony will be the backup band for Seanan McGuire, our good friend, author, and songwriter whose recently-published urban fantasy novel, Rosemary and Rue, is getting rave reviews. Wayward Coffeehouse will play host to a combined concert of Seanan's songs and readings from her books. Details here.
Whew! That's a lot of stuff, and that's not even mentioning the conventions coming up early next year that we're really excited about. I thought this fall/winter season was going to calm and relaxing. What happened?
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| Pegasus 2009 |
24 Oct 2009 05:44pm |
 Pegasus 2009 Awards are over. Thank you so much, everyone. We are floored. Every time we get nominated, I look at the field and I'm convinced that everyone else in the category is much more deserving of the award. We're so honored.
Among the highlights of the weekend so far was Rand & Adam from Ookla the Mok interrupting our acceptance speech Kanye West-style with, "I'm 'a let you finish, but Beyonce had one of the best videos of all time!" Pretty much the perfect gag.
Here is the full award list for 2009:
Best Filk Song
The Wreck of the Crash of the Easthill Mining Disaster by Brooke Lunderville
Best Classic Filk Song
Still Catch the Tide by Talis Kimberley
Best Performer
Heather Dale & Ben Deschamps
Best Writer/Composer
Vixy & Tony
A Little Bit Country (2009 floating category)
Stray Dog Man by Bill Sutton
A Little Bit Rock and Roll (2009 floating category)
Six-String Love by Vixy & Tony
Off to the Interfilk Auction with us, then the huge filk circle of doom. There's still two nights worth of filking left to do!
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| Achy Breaky Earworm |
16 Oct 2009 11:47am |
Today's Straight Dope is a very interesting one about earworms. Much was stuff we already knew (the "itch" concept, for example), but a couple of items amused me, including this one:
In the early 1980s Chicago parking garage bigwig Myron Warshauer used earworms as the basis of a patented "musical theme floor reminder system," in which a different well-known song plays in each floor's elevator lobby. When you come back hours later and can't remember what floor you parked on, all you have to do is pay attention to the tune that's (theoretically) still running through your head - the song titles are listed opposite the buttons in the elevators.
In other news, Brütal Legend is hilarious, we're going to see Alton Brown speak tonight, and OVFF is next weekend. Who's going?
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| Jobs! |
05 Oct 2009 10:15am |
My company is hiring for a Director of Information Technology. I'm also told we're looking for a temporary Web Developer position that may go permanent (it's Windows ASP/SQL/Dotnet type stuff). They pay well, the atmosphere is relaxed and positive, and I like the people I work with. I get a decent referral bonus, so ping me if you want me to submit your resumé for you.
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