i'm goin' to toontown

"Iiiit's that time again!"

"Time to wear the lilac?"

"Time to steal the Death Star plans?"
"Nooooo. It's time for another New York / New Jersey area housefilk!"

Next Sunday afternoon, June 4, from 12 to 4 pm.
Aaron Davies will be our host.

The address is: 100 Christopher Columbus Dr., Jersey City, NJ 07302 (right next to the Grove St. PATH Station; exit from the middle of the platform and go up the escalator).

Once in the building, take the elevator to the seventh floor and go through the door between the two pairs of elevators; turn right and the room is on your right, just past the kitchen.

RSVP by emailing adavies42(at)me(dot)com. Feel free to boost the signal!

Oh god, I won.

2016 Pegasus award, Best Filk Song: "Creatures of Dream."

I ... have a lot I want to say about this song and this honor, but there's one thing I really should have said upon acceptance, and that's gotta come first. "Creatures of Dream" wouldn't exist without Jesse Dangerously, who introduced me to nerdcore and told me that there was no reason I couldn't write rap and said super nice things about the first lyrics I sent him, and cobbled together the original beat for this song in a cave out of a box of scraps. (Said scraps including Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer's "Shadows of Evangeline", and voice samples from the late greats Jim Henson and Gene Wilder.)

The other really important thing is what I did say on acceptance, and that's that if you don't usually like rap but you like this song, then I guarantee you: there is other rap you will like. And over the next week or so, hopefully with Jesse's help, I will be putting together a long list of tracks and artists you should check out, because without all of these other brilliant lyricists and rappers I couldn't have written anything like this.

And, well ... I also couldn't have written it, or had any faintest notion of performing it for anyone, if it weren't for the filk community. Because this song is quite possibly the most viscerally autobiographical thing I've ever done -- and I knew, the whole time I was writing it, that there were people who would listen to it because in filk we listen to everybody, and who would both sympathize and understand. That these things I was saying, that were fundamentally true about me, were also fundamentally true about a lot of you too. You know where I've been, because you've been where I am.

(As evidenced by the fact that "Creatures of Dream" and one of the other nominees this year, Vixy and Tony's "We Are Who We Are", are basically twins.) (-- and while I'm on that subject, can I just say? There was not a single song in the category this year that I would not have been proud to lose to. Such a great, great ballot this year, you guys; I fully intend to nominate all of these songs again until they win.)

I'm still a little overwhelmed and I don't see that passing anytime soon. To the filk community: thank you. Thank you all so much.

If anybody would cross-post or link to this on Facebook, wherever filk people will see it, I would be most grateful.

"Iiiit's that time again!"

"Time to select this year's sacrificial pumpkin?"

"Time to pick up a copy of Grays Sports Almanac 1950-2000?"
"Nooooo. It's time for another New York / New Jersey area housefilk!"

Sunday, October 18, at the home of Aaron Davies in Jersey City. Details and RSVP here or here. Feel free to boost the signal!

Oh hey, what's that right at the bottom of the Upcoming Guests section of the Interfilk Guests page?

Does that say Batya Wittenberg at FilKONtario 26 in 2016?

WHY, I DO BELIEVE IT DOES. :D :D :D

Tonight is the first night of Rosh Hashanah, the two-day Jewish New Year, first of the autumn holidays. As usual, in mundane terms, this means don't expect to see me online between now(ish) and Saturday night.

In spiritual terms: the year has come to a close, and as always, the next ten days will be our annual performance review.

It's been a rough year in a lot of ways, for a lot of people that I love, and for a lot of people that I will never meet.

Let the year and its curses conclude, we say, and let the year and its blessings begin.

Amen, amen, amen.

Dear self: next time you make a post about being gone for three days for the Northeast Floating Filk Con, it'd probably help if you made sure it actually posted before closing down your computer.

Aaaanyway. Hi, internets! sdelmonte and I are back from Contata! Where we got to hang out with and sing with and listen to a bunch of awesome people and excellent musicians, in between and around helping run the thing.

(And now: naps.)

Submissions are open for the Contata 2014 songbook! Details here.

I have a tumblr account.

That isn't new; I've had it for some months now in order to follow the tumblr blogs of people I like, plus other blogs I was finding interesting. What's new is that my account is no longer zero-content, because I have finally started reblogging things.

Why? Well ... about mumble-something years ago, there was this guy I knew in Gargoyles fandom. We were involved in producing various fanworks together, including both of us being on the staff of The Gargoyles Saga ... but what we mostly collaborated-slash-competed on was filk. I mostly fell out of the active fandom around the time when I got married (though I visited the conventions again a time or two), and while we followed each other on LJ for a while, Patrick and I sort of gradually lost touch.

And sometime in December I re-encountered him on tumblr -- I believe by way of looking at the tag for Disney's Frozen. And then this happened.

Followed by this, this, this, and this...

And finally this.

As I said in one of the posts: Whoever had January 14 in the betting pool for “how long will it take before she breaks the no-content policy”, or either “filk” or “connecting with an old friend” for “what’s going to finally make her actually post something,” please stop by the office to collect your winnings.

I am not sure yet how/whether I'm going to connect my Dreamwidth/Livejournal account to my tumblr account. Any thoughts? Also, are there any of you lovely people who have (or wish to recommend) tumblrs that I should know about?

(It is completely ridiculous that I haven't posted a thing since August.)

This is to announce two things! Firstly, that I will be away tonight and tomorrow night on account of traveling to Atlanta for my cousin's wedding; I will probably have intermittent email access, but don't expect to see me online.

And secondly, for those of you who have not already heard me flailing about it, that I am attempting to unofficially participate in NaNoWriMo this year. (Or an abbreviated version thereof; I'm going for 30K rather than 50K words in total.)

oh god.

Hello, internet! I am coming to you live from scenic Gaithersburg, MD, where Alex and I are attending this year's iteration of NEFilk, the floating NorthEast Filk convention: Conterpoint! I have reasonably reliable wifi but will not be at my usual haunts until Sunday night (or Monday night, depending how exhausted we are when we get home Sunday); expect my pants to be bankrupt next week.

Love you all. (Yes, even you. Yes, especially you.) See you when I see you.