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!

"Iiiit's that time again!"

"Story time?"

"Hammer time?"

"Greenwich Mean Time?"

"Nooooo. It's time for another New York / New Jersey area housefilk!"

Sunday, January 22nd, 2017, at the home of Josh Kronengold and Lisa Padol in Woodside, Queens. Details and RSVP here or here.

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.

Thing the first: As the Pegasus Awards Nomination deadline draws closer, I've been signal-boosting elsewhere on the internet, and realized I should probably do the same here. Go check out the brainstorming poll! And then nominate! Nominate like the WIND! (I also embarked on a project of compiling audio links of the brainstorming poll results, but there is seriously not going to be enough time to do it. But go check out the list anyway!)
(also: "Creatures of Dream" made the brainstorming poll aaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh)

Thing the second: I have just reposted a bunch of short-short ficbits I wrote on tumblr to my AO3 account, including the "Blue Food" one that some of you have heard me talking about recently.

Thing the third: my lost phone has been found and returned to me by a kind and helpful stranger! Now I just need to copy all the old phone numbers into the new phone. Unless I can just get the SIM card transferred. Note to self: look into that.

Thing the fourth: the kidney stone saga continues, very boringly. As of a week ago today I have had ~*laser surgery*~ on one of them, and I am assured that at this point I should have a bunch of fine sand-to-gravel where the biggest stone used to be. Sadly, neither the lasers nor the earlier sonic blast treatment appear to have conferred any superpowers.

Every so often I remember that (a) most of you here don't follow me on tumblr, and (b) I don't post the kind of personal stuff on tumblr that I used to post here all the time, and what that means is that people aren't getting updated about important stuff in my life. For instance I don't think I've actually posted about it here at all since my relatively recent health troubles started. WOOPS. Some of you already know bits of it; I think I've sort of been stalling on saying anything here until I could put together a coherent and cleverly worded post about it? For some reason?

1. OKAY SO HI EVERYBODY it turns out I've got kidney stones. Have known this for roughly six months, ish, and have been getting various forms of tests and treatment, punctuated by exciting visits to the emergency room -- most recently last Thursday night, just into the last two days of Pesach. I was able to go home Friday afternoon, after another visit to ambulatory surgery to have some new hardware installed; I already had one on the right and now I've got a matched pair. Whee. I'm really hoping to be able to step up the further procedures to finally get rid of the stones (and thus also the hardware, which isn't terribly comfortable). I am assured by my doctor that this is not-repeat-not in any way likely to be a life-threatening issue, and given successful treatment, shouldn't have any long-term impact on quality of life either. I really hope he's right.

2. Unrelated to my health, another thing I really wish I'd posted about sooner: being the Interfilk guest at FKO last month was an honor and a delight, and I hope we get to go back on occasion in future. Phil Mills got some lovely photos of my concert, along with many others; there's also a video of Mark Bernstein leading and directing a choral performance of "Green Hills of Earth." (If anyone here has video of my concert, or knows anyone else who does, please let me know.)

3. This is neither particularly coherent nor particularly cleverly worded, but if I don't just sigh and hit the Post To button anyway, it'll never go up.

"Iiiit's that time again!"

"Time for another edition of Thunderdome?"

"Time for Together Breakfast?"
"Nooooo. It's time for another New York / New Jersey area housefilk!"

Sunday, August 16, at Witts' End. 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

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?