For the first time in who knows how long, we had a bunch of friends over for for what you might call a party. An evening of food, beverages, and, as is often the case with this group of people, Rock Band. As I type this, things have wound down, the guests have left, and the clean-up is largely done (yeah, it’s early…we’re old.). I think things went well. Everyone seemed to have a good time. I hope they did. That said, I’m wrestling a bit with that voice inside my head that keeps saying “bah, they were just humoring you, and are spending their drive home laughing at you and your pathetic attempts at hosting an entertaining evening!” Not that I realistically think or would ever believe for a minute that my great friends would actually be like that, but that voice, that little gremlin of self doubt, is forever there taunting me, because there’s just enough of a certain kind of unpleasantness in my past to feed it.

I really wanna strangle that voice.

Why? because that voice really makes it difficult to simply loosen up and enjoy the time with friends whose company is really wonderful and pleasant. Seriously, damn all those times in the past when people treated me exactly that way, and left me broken enough to forever hold, however small, the expectation that things are going to eventually go south; that no matter how unambiguously great things are, the other shoe’s eventually going to drop. It’s a truly crappy thing to have to deal with.

In any case, I’m going to try not to listen, because that’s what you do. Doesn’t always make it easy.

….finally -ectomied.

Three back-to-back conference call meetings running for a period of over four hours. It was truly a test of endurance, which I guess I passed. Barely.

At least it’s over.

On a totally unrelated note, I took some online training this week. The course included a little through-line plot involving a cast of cartoon office mates. And in the last module, they all had a relaxed meeting at a lakeside resort…SURROUNDING A PORTAL TO HELL!!!!!

No, it’s not that funny, but it’s that kind of day…I laugh at lame jokes to keep from throwing myself into traffic.

…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.