The first four police cars that roared by with full lights & siren blaring were a hint.
The two fire trucks doing the same indicated that the game was afoot.
The ambulance meant that it was serious.
But when the LAPD helicopter starts orbiting at 500 feet, NOW IT’S A PARTY!!
(Never did figure out exactly what was going on, but it was about two blocks away. The chopper was gone in about five minutes.)
Filed under Los Angeles, Photography
I took surprisingly few pictures in our five day trip to Toronto. It wasn’t so much a conscious decision (I took along four cameras plus the cell phone, as usual) as it was that I was busy doing other things. This is probably a good thing.
I did find some Canadian graffiti. This is a gang I could join.
I took way too many pictures of small (and shrinking) patches of dirty snow. This could explain the odd glances and muttered comments by the locals.
Even when the snow was pretty much gone, I kept taking pictures day after day, as if it might magically re-appear. Living in LA for long enough will do that to you, I guess.
I did manage to find a decent sunset. Good to know they have them there as well.
Goodbye, Toronto. We’ll be back, I’m sure!
Filed under Photography, Travel
That was wonderful!
However, we returned to find that the moving and packing faeries haven’t done DIDDLY SQUAT since we left, so we’re back to that tomorrow. Thirty-six days to go – sooner would be better, much sooner would be much better.
And I have to go back to work tomorrow.
Assuming I didn’t come down with a case of “con crud.” (Actually, I think I have to go back to work tomorrow even if I did come down with a case of “con crud.” “Death will not release me,” and all of that.)
Let the jet lag begin!!
Filed under Castle Willett, Travel
It’s been a most wonderful weekend. The dead penguin party continues as we wind down.
Today’s HOF concert was a singular event for me, having dear friends performing my favorite songs. I also performed my signature song, “Ronald Reagan – Carl Sagan – San Diego Pagan Blues,” for the first time in many, many years.
I have seen many old friends and made many new friends, had some fascinating conversations, learned new songs, and even dragged out a decades-old song from PFNEN to sing. (In public and everything!)
A million thanks to the FilkOntario convention committee and Filk Hall of Fame jury, especially Dave & Judith Hayman and Peggi Warner-Lalonde, who have pulled off miracles to make it all run smoothly.
FilkOntario has been wonderful! I can’t wait to come back!!
I’ve mentioned filk music here. Not often perhaps since it’s not a primary activity of mine these days – part of that whole “adulting” thing where we don’t get to do the things we like so much because we’re so busy doing the things we need to do. (Or so we tell ourselves.)
In brief, “filk” music is the music of science fiction and fantasy fandom. There are endless attempts to define it, but I always just defined it as “anything sung at a filksing.”
In the late 40’s and 50’s at early SF conventions, filksings were born as an activity to be pursued in the wee hours of the evening, generally in a hallway or hotel lobby, often with alcohol involved. Get a dozen friends, a couple of guitars, a comfy spot, and stay up singing weird songs until 2 AM, or 4 AM, or breakfast, and you’ve had a filksing.
Some of these songs are goofy, written in the “Mad Magazine style,” to the tune of “Greensleeves” or “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” or something by the Beach Boys or whatever. Some are serious. Some are about TV shows or movies or books or cons or fans or space or dragons or aliens or any of a zillion other topics. Some are written to original music and can be stunningly beautiful. Some are standard folk songs by folks like Stan Rogers or Eric Bogle, some are “found filk” like “The Battle of Evermore” from Led Zeppelin IV.
Back in the early 1980’s, before I had kids and a career and didn’t have to do “adulting” 100% of the time, I helped to start some filk conventions in Los Angeles. I also started printing a filk-based monthly fanzine, “The Philk Fee-Nom-Ee-Non,” which was nominated for a Best Fanzine Hugo Award in 1984.
Time moved on.
I had kids and started “adulting.” We went to a lot of bigger SF cons with the kids (like Westercon and Worldcon and Baycon) and did a lot of filking. We went to a lot of smaller filkcons like Consonance and ConChord. But PFNEN went the way of the dodo.
Time moved on.
I stopped running filkcons. We started not getting to Worldcon or Westercon or Baycon every year. Or even every other year. But the cons kept happening, including the filkcons, now run by new fans. I got to a filkcon every now and then.
Time moved on.
And the kids grew up and moved out – and kept in touch with cons and fandom on their own. As my demands for “adulting” became a bit less overwhelming, we started going back to filkcons and other SF cons.
Meanwhile, a group of filkers in the Toronto had started their own filkcon. Associated with FilkOntario they began, twenty-four years ago, a Filk Hall of Fame. A couple of filkers every year are inducted.
In January I got a call, informing me that I had been chosen for induction into the Filk Hall of Fame, based on my work years ago as one of the founders of ConChord and the monthly Los Angeles Filkers Anonymous house filksings as well as my publication of PFNEN.
It’s been a secret, since the inductees aren’t revealed until the HoF banquet at FilkOntario. I hadn’t ever been to a FilkOntario, but obviously I was going to make it this year.
Now we’ve had the banquet and the induction ceremonies so I can share the news.
I’m still more than a little bit amazed, despite having known about it for a couple of months. I look at the list of musicians and filkers who have already been inducted and I’m incredibly honored to be thought worthy of inclusion with all of them. I’m grateful to the nomination group and the jury which made the final picks for this year’s inductees.
So that’s why I’m in Toronto this weekend. Spending a wonderful weekend with a whole group of old friends, many new friends, singing songs, listening to amazingly talented musicians, all doing things we love just for the fun of it (believe me, no one is getting rich or even making a living doing this!).
Wow. Who would have thunk it?
Filed under Uncategorized
It’s melting.
Spots that are in the shade most of the day aren’t showing much change, of course.
On the other hand, spots that saw a lot of sun are almost clear.
There are some big piles where snow was shoveled or plowed to get it out of the way. They’ll last for days or even weeks. But for the most part it will all be gone before we leave next week.
I understand that none of this is news, or even interesting, to those of you who live with snow. I haven’t in over 40 years, wasn’t expecting it at all now, and it’s novel.
And I’m having fun at FilkOntario! It’s a good place to be this weekend.
Filed under Uncategorized
I understand that it snows in Canada.
I just don’t ever remember it snowing in mid-April up here. I used to live in Vermont, which isn’t that much different climate-wise from Toronto and I rarely remember getting snow after my birthday in mid-March.
April was “mud season,” meaning that everything was melting and thawing. It also meant that everything was turning green, not this barren and defoliated.
They say it will all melt away by the time we leave on Monday – we’ll see.
Meanwhile they do have pretty sunsets with the white ground a nice contrast. As well as a prominent sun pillar from the setting sun, the setting sun reflecting off of ice crystals high in the atmosphere.
Meanwhile, the Angels game from Anaheim doesn’t start until after 22:00 here? How do these people live?!!
Filed under Photography, Travel
If you want to take a couple of days off and go to see some friends north of the border, not only do you have to get a ton of work done on the move (which is progressing) and at the office (where we’re still mid-audit but surviving) and at the hangar (where it always seems to be a losing battle to stay current), but then you have to deal with THIS abomination:
I reserve the right to be grumpy tomorrow. Especially crammed into a middle seat.
I know it will be worth it. But still…
Look out, Toronto. Here I come!
It was stunning – the pictures might have been a touch better if I had been able to grab a tripod, but given the last few days of panicking and packing, I’m not sure I could put my hands on a tripod in less than about an hour (or six) if my life depended on it. So holding my breath, being really still, bracing on the neighbor’s mailbox, and shooting a lot of pictures and hoping for one or two that didn’t suck will have to do for tonight.
The two-day old moon is on the left (370,557 km away), Venus on the right (225,892,785 km away).
The 6% crescent of the moon is illuminated by direct sunlight – the rest of the moon is illuminated enough by reflected Earthlight so you can see the dark mare areas.
With a better setup and a bit more magnification, you would see that both the moon and Venus are showing the same crescent shape and (to an excellent first approximation) the same percentage of illumination.
Angles! Geometry! Science! Math!
It’s also just very pretty, dangling up there in the twilight.
Filed under Astronomy, Photography
Yep, that’s pretty much the way I’m seeing the world these days. Not sure which way is up most of the time. Things that used to take me 30 seconds to put my hands on now take 30 minutes, assuming I can find them at all.
This might be a definition of “winning” that has so far evaded my ken.
Filed under Deep Thoughts, Photography
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 