…it seems.

Sometimes, being alone is the best way to be.

I kinda love this song, always have. The whole Shooting Rubberbands at the Stars record really, but especially this song. And it’s just kind of speaking to me right now.

♫ Halalalalalala <plink> <plink> ♫

As I’d mentioned previously, we spent the weekend at Balticon doing the geek thing. Generally, I believe a good time was had by all, though I will freely admit that a long-weekend convention is probably about twelve to eighteen hours longer than I’m used to or (more likely) capable of handling without a little bit of practice.

This was the first time I’d been to this particular con, although it’s been going on, right there, a totally reasonable driving distance from where I spent my teen years, for forty-five years. I wish I knew about it then…I really could have used the jolt of positive reinforcement from interacting with all kinds of people who truly enjoyed…nay, reveled in, these kind of pursuits, rather than spending all that time convincing myself (and being convinced by others) that I really ought to keep trying to be something I wasn’t instead.

While I spent some time relaxing in the con suite talking to fellow attendees and recharging on snacks and beverages, I found myself watching the raucous pack of roughly teenage LARPers (they were, you know, right there, and one of them was my kid, so I had an interest) doing their thing, and I was more than a bit jealous. Most of those kids reminded me a lot of myself at that delicate age: kind of awkward, a little too clever for my own good, and not socially saavy enough to translate that cleverness into much of anything redeemable just yet. However, unlike me at that age, they’d all managed to find each other in large numbers. As such, they all got to be companionably awkward together, enjoying each other’s like-minded company in a safe environment and learning to be a little more socially confident through the surprisingly useful vehicle of pretending to be heroes and villans solving a mystery on a space station.

For a couple of days, at least, they got to feel like they weren’t alone in the universe, and got to spend time time with peers who share their interests instead of judging them for having them. I know how good that feels as an adult; I can only imagine how much more glorious it must feel when you’re nerdy and fourteen.

…anyway. ahem.

Beyond a couple of panels on things like home-brewing (a surprisingly nerdy pursuit), the challenges of being a geek parent (both the “official” geek parenting panel and unofficially with other parents shepherding things on the kid stuff programming track), and taking in Mark Van Name’s spoken word comedy piece, “Mr. Poor Choices”, I spent most of the weekend immersed in the con’s music programming, and probably saw more live music over the course of a couple of days than I’d seen in the previous two or three years.

In addition to the “geek music” panel, which largely involved discussing the definition of geek music and went twenty minutes before playing the Coulton card, I saw performances from the following artists:

• Ditched By Kate – alternative rock by podcasters with violins and stuff
• Jonah Knight – singer-songwriter steampunk paranormal folk. Often gorgeous
• John Anealio – sci-fi/geek folk supported by guitar playing that makes me feel totally inadequate. Also, a stand-up guy with whom I regularly converse with via twitter on all manner of topics. It was great finally meeting him in meatspace.
• Worm Quartet – comedy electro punk coming from some very strange places. It’s amazing, glorious, and little bit scary.
• Insane Ian – video game hip hop and some clever parody tunes; as heard on the Doctor Demento show.
• Devo Spice – who aptly bills himself as the redheaded step child of “Weird” Al Yankovic and Eminem; hip hop comedy with a nerdy edge. Lots of fun.
• Bill and Brenda Sutton – the filk/music guests of honor at the con; I caught their music for kids performance, which the pre-schooler enjoyed immensely.

Additionally, we spent some time poking around the dealers’ room, admiring costumes (the Dalek kid kicked ass), and talking to people. The spouse picked up a couple of signed books by author Gail Z. Martin, the middle child spent a great deal of time playing “Wings of War” in the game room (which sadly, wasn’t as extensive as the Mars or Raven rooms – gaming at this one was a bit lacking) and I finally got my hands on a copy of Browncoats: Redemption, the fan-made, blessed by the creators charity film set post-Serenity in the Firefly universe.

Finally (on this list, though it was actually the first con-thing I did) I attended a screening of the indie film Ninjas vs Vampires, which is a hell of a lot of fun if you can manage to track it down. It’s a good-looking and hugely entertaining comedy-horror film with a profane Buffy vibe, most enjoyable for the fact that the cast and crew are obviously having so much fun making the thing and sharing it with people. Almost the entire cast was present for the screening, and they moved a bunch of DVDs solely on the sense of infectious enthusiasm they had for the project.

In any case, that’s the con rundown; fun and successful as usual. Also, it pretty much wraps convention season for us for the year, or at least until October should we hit Capclave in DC (which we likely will, given Carrie Vaughn’s attendance). In the short term, the challenge is to transition successfully back into the world of the mundane.

Spent the weekend at Balticon, which I shall write up later, probably, but for now, I just wanted to post this video of a song I heard performed this weekend, which I thought was funny, and finally makes that damned passive aggressive NiceGuy™ song tolerable:

As soon as the kids get home from school, we’ll be heading on up to Balticon for some weekend geeking out. Hope traffic doesn’t suck.

1. “September Song” – Django Reinhardt
2. “Wart Hog” – The Ramones
3. “Chewbacca (What A Wookiee)” – Supernova
4. “What I am” – Edie Brickell & The New Bohemians
5. “Perfect Smile” – The Cellarbirds
6. “Long Road” – Patty Griffin
7. “Always” – Bon Jovi
8. “Strong Enough” – Sheryl Crow
9. “Please Let That Be You” – The Rentals
10. “The Fox” – Nickel Creek

…that (a) this statement by “Lori on slacktivist wasn’t true, and (b) that I was clever enough to phrase it this way first:

In fairness, there has been a vigorous 3 decade long campaign to redefine Liberal as “slightly to the left of Ho Chi Minh” and also, inexplicably, “Hitler”. If you believed that you’d describe yourself as Conservative too.

Yes, people who believe that are stupid, but when practically the entire political and media establishment is marinating the country in dumbass sauce all day every day it’s more difficult to be smart than it should be.

“marinating the country in dumbass sauce”…that’s a great turn of phrase.

It’s all part of the whole business of how much of American society has been aggressively pushing the misguided idea that being smart and/or intellectual is a Very Bad Thing™. I wish there was more I could do, besides railing against it here in this space, and encourage my kids to appreciate learning for learning’s sake, to counter that idea.

I hope all you hoopy froods have your towels handy, because it’s that time of year.

I’ve got mine, how about you?

All in good fun, Towel Day is a totally made up (aren’t they all?) holiday in celebration of the life and work of Douglas Adams, the man who brought us not nearly enough fun books, games, radio plays, and Doctor Who scripts before passing on way too early.

To close, one of my favorite DNA quips:

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.

Anyway, stay safe and secure while hitching the galaxy, have a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster on me, and always, ALWAYS know where your towel is.

Once again, a couple of short thoughts on some records:

♦Damn Yankees – Don’t Tread: Jack Blades (Night Ranger), Tommy Shaw (Styx), and Ted Nugent, all relatively heavy hitters in the 70s and 80s, joined forces in the 90’s to form this “super group” and had several hits, a couple of which were on this, the second (and last) record featuring this lineup (Shaw and Blades kept going as…”Shaw/Blades” for a couple of albums after Ted left to go solo, shoot things, and campaign for a certain Alaskan ex-governor). Like a lot of these discs I talk about, I don’t remember buying it, but again, I bought a lot of things in the ’88-’94 time frame, and this fits with my general hair-metal friendly worldview – or again, somebody could have left it behind; I don’t know. The record itself isn’t bad – Blades’ and Shaw’s vocals blend well, especially on standouts like “The Silence is Broken,” even if by ’92 or thereabouts when this came out the polished hair metal sound was already kind of played out. There’s a bit of the gruff “Motor City Madman” guitar attitude on display here, even if this is from the period where Ted wore a floor-length zebra-striped vest and Oakley sunglasses instead of the trademark loincloth. Of course, it’s almost all filtered through the distinctive sound of the Eventide Harmonizer, a guitar effects processor that was as ubiquitious in the early 90s as overcranked Autotune is today on pop vocals.

♦Kane Roberts – Saints and Sinners: Through my teen years, I was a huge fan of Bon Jovi. As much as I was able (in the days before the internet), I tracked down rare b-sides, guest appearances, and songwriting credits from members of the band, because I’m more than a little bit obsessive-compulsive. That’s how I ended up with this record, the second solo project for Roberts, guitarist from Alice Cooper’s band throughout the 80s. The “hit” single from this project was “Does Anybody Really Fall in Love Anymore?,” a lesser power ballad composed by Jon Bon Jovi, Richie Sambora, Desmond Child and Dianne “why Aerosmith sucks now” Warren. It’s obviously a Bon Jovi-affiliated composition, but the band never felt it was worthy to record it themselves (originally, it was tossed to Cher on one of her 80s comeback records, presumably because she and Sambora had been hooking up at the time). The rest of the record, while catchy and well produced, is an aggressively Desmond Child project, with his signature crunchy-yet-impeccably-polished guitar tone and shout-along gang vocal choruses on every. single. track. (which, I suspect are there in part to fill out the reediness of Roberts’ voice when he hits the higher register). Still, it’s an interesting artifact of the waning years of pop metal that I enjoyed listening to from a guy who according to Wikipedia is now primarily a video game programmer.

♦Syn’D Cats – Catophonic: I picked this record up at one of the band’s shows in a bar in Central PA at some point in the mid-90s; the ‘cats were one of the crop of bands that filled out that particular scene in the early 90s that won a lot of awards and some high profile gigs, but never snapped up a major label deal like Live or The Badlees. The band’s sound was very 60s-70s electric blues; the lead singer always reminded me of Joe Cocker with his looks and presence (and on a side note, he gave me a drunken “Great set, Dude!” after I did my 15 minutes’ worth at a Harrisburg open mic one time, so there’s that). Lots of fun tunes great for dive bar sing-a-longs like “Broken Smile,” “Junkyard Women” and “60 dollar bill” that really do deserve more attention than they got as part of the B-team line-up from a B-team music scene. This is a record I never stopped listening to; it’s had a pretty regular place on my mp3 players for the last decade.

♦Todd Snider: Songs for The Daily Planet: Here’s another one I must’ve picked up at a used record store, given the “for promotional use only” sticker on the jewel case; which I’m sure I probably did. I remember “Alright Guy” getting some radio play off of this sometimes snarky, sometimes sincere alt-country ode to Generation X; which is probably why I picked it up. While it’s got a definite 90s slacker satire sensibility (witness “My Generation Part 2*” and “Talkin’ Seattle Grunge Rock Blues”), the whole record is really a bit more timeless; it owes just as much to the sixties folk and troubador tradition espoused by Arlo Guthrie (“Talkin'” again) and Pete Seeger (“That Was Me”) as it does to anything else. It’s a great collection of songwriting that’ll make you laugh as well as touch you (in a totally non-creepy, non-sexual way).

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* – “…verse three, chapter four, jackson five, nikki sixx,” which is perhaps the best way to start of an album I can think of, ever, except for maybe going right out there and refus(ing) to do acoustical versions of the electrical songs (you) had refused to record in the first place.

New Torchwood coming this summer, with what looks like an interesting set of all-new, all-American guest stars:

Best image in the trailer? Gwen with the baby in one hand and the honking huge hand cannon in the other…though I did like the bit where she drops the one liner and throws the haymaker at Sierra. This one should be fun, especially since Jack seems like he’s a little closer to quippy, happy-go-lucky Jack than he was at the end of “Children of Earth.”

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Then, come the fall, there’s this, which you really just kind of have to watch without any preconceived notions. Seriously, just click and enjoy.

Not the most exciting couple of days, but I got some stuff done…for example, if my soul was as clean and untarnished as my bathtub was by Saturday afternoon, I almost certainly would have gotten Raptured.*

Otherwise, we unloaded the eldest child at girl scout high adventure camp for a couple of days, did a little little shopping, got some housecleaning done, played a little Portal 2 (I’m only just starting chapter three, people, don’t spoil me!), hung out with friends for a little while, and not much else out of the ordinary.

Oh, also, some of the housecleaning led directly to shopping. We dropped some old clothes and an old NTSC tv off at the Goodwill store, and I came back with a JVC dual cassette deck (so I can play all the tapes at the bottom of my music trunk again) and a plasma ball (because I never had one, and really, I don’t own enough mad scientist paraphrenalia).

Not bad for fourteen bucks’ investment, since that tape deck probably cost $200 new.

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* – Not that I believed the world was going to end on Saturday; that’s a ridiculous notion, and not at all biblically sound (were I of the stripe to look for justification there); pre-millenial dispensationism as theology is pretty fringe, and only about 125 years old anyway – it’s just gotten mainstreamed because of the Left Behind books, which as we all know, are pretty much crap. However, I kind of feel for all those folks who planned their entire lives around not being in the world anymore after Saturday, 6:00pm, quitting jobs and blowing money on billboards and such; not to mention how they all had to look at each other on Sunday morning in the megachurch pews feeling sheepish. I can’t imagine they feel particularly secure in their convictions or their financial situation right now, and neither of those things feels particularly good in my experience. Still, I haven’t tired of the bathtub joke all weekend since I originally made it, so I share it here for posterity.

♦Elvis Costello – Brutal Youth: Remember the BMG mail order CD club? The one where you got a little catalog and a postcard every month and if you didn’t return the postcard by a certain time (and sometimes even when you did), they’d send you (and charge you for) a CD you didn’t necessarily want? Back in 1994, this was one of those CDs, and for whatever reason, I never bothered returning it. Now, my 19 year old self certainly wouldn’t seek out an Elvis Costello record, though I probably held on to this one because on some level, my poor, sad, sheltered teenage self recognized that Mr. Costello was cooler than I was capable of handling at the time. As I listened to this disc this week, I found myself enjoying it a hell of a lot; certainly more than I could have back then. Seriously, pure Irish pop perfection; not one bad tune to be had, from “Pony St.” to “Favorite Hour,” with standouts like “13 Steps Lead Down” and “This Is Hell” in between.

♦Extreme – Waiting For The Punchline: I really loved this band, and not, surprisingly, because of “More Than Words,” even if it was pretty much the soundtrack of much of my Junior and Senior years of high school. They were a great, talented, funk-metal combo with some serious riffs, excellent quirky and intelligent lyrics, and high aspirations…they did a three-side rock opera record with full orchestration and damn it all, it worked…in the early 1990s. This record is the oft-forgotten, much maligned fourth record before the band broke up, Nuno tried to go solo, and Cherone ended up with Van Halen (and did a much better record than anybody gives him credit for). As opposed to the highly choreographed production of the first several records, this one’s stripped down and grungy, with hardly any overdubs to speak of (on purpose – Seattle was hitting big, and they borrowed a bit of the vibe), and when I first listened to it in ’95, I really didn’t like it; it was too different, and I wasn’t ready for that kind of experimentation. However, with a little distance, I had a blast with it this week – it’s got all the hallmarks of what I loved about the band: the surprising lyrical depth, the great rhythm sense, the tight vocal harmonies, and the totally insane (but not terribly wanky) guitar pyrotechnics; just distilled down to their essence; I imagine it’s what the band would have sounded like in a dank little club in Boston in ’90…which is perfectly okay with me.

♦Devonsquare – Bye Bye Route 66: Another notched spine special; I can’t remember what exactly posessed my to buy it; I know I was using a surprisingly powerful antenna on my dorm room radio about the time I bought this and was listening to a lot of the rock station out of Baltimore, which played a bunch of stuff I’d never heard before; I believe “If You Could See Me Now,” the big single off this record, was one of those. And really, it’s still a great little pop tune that’s aged well. Too bad the rest of the record sounds like warmed-over 70s California yacht rock or a really mediocre Fleetwood Mac tribute band, especially when Alana McDonald isn’t singing.

♦The White Stripes – Elephant: Another wonderful, stripped down affair, with just the kind of exuberant energy to snap me out of the “wanna kill every driver on the highway” mood I found myself in yesterday afternoon on the way back from DC. It’s hard to believe that there were only two people in this band; the wall of sound is surprisingly large, when most of of it’s just guitar, drums, and vocals. “Seven Nation Army” just sticks with you.