Wanyicacs!

Tonight!  8pm!

Walker basement!
(3104 16th Ave. S, Mpls)

Hey now, folks.  Just wanted to remind those of you in the TC area that the Wayniacs are going to be putting on a bash at Patrick's Cabaret on Saturday, October 24.  Mark your calendars, 'cause it's gonna be a whole lotta fun.

If you miss that, we'll be playing for a Walker Church fundraiser a couple of weeks later, on November 7, in the basement of said church (31st Street & 16th Ave. S).  But I recommend the Patrick's gig because the space is way cooler.

Hey, two gigs in as many weeks!  It's our fall 2009 World Tour!

Has anybody here read Sophie Kinsella?  What do you think?

Just watched The Nines last night, courtesy of Netflix.  This is a terrific movie.  I can't believe I had never heard of it.  If it was ever in the theaters around here, it must have sneaked in & out of town with minimal notice.  I only found it by watching previews on other DVDs.

Written & directed by the guy who wrote Go and Big Fish, so you know it's going to be quirky at the very least.  Unfortunately, the nature of the film is such that I can't tell you anything about it, other than to say you should see it.

Neil Gaiman's latest, The Graveyard Book.  I'm about halfway through, and it's wonderful.  Of course, you knew it would be, right?

While leafing through the DVD racks at the public library last week, I came across a double-disc set of Broadway Melody of 1936 and Broadway Melody of 1938.  I dimly remembered that some of the songs from Singing in the Rain came from these (or at least from one of them), so I picked it up. 

The 1938 one was okay, but Broadway Melody of 1936 -- WOW!   Packed full of music and dancing, but leaving plenty of room for a decent 30's-comedy plot.  Jack Benny did quite well as a snoopy newspaper columnist who's not above dirty tricks, and showed that he used to be able to do more than look at the audience and say, "Well!"   A big surprise was Buddy Ebsen and his sister as a song-and-dance act from the sticks -- who knew Jed Clampett could dance so well?

But the best of all was Eleanor Powell.  What an amazing dancer.  She has three solo dances in the film, each one more fabulous than the last.  Equally the quality of Fred Astaire, but for some sad reason all but forgotten today (while Astaire is still a household word).

The tunes are great, too.  "You Are My Lucky Star", "Broadway Rhythm", and "I've Got a Feelin' You're Foolin'" -- the latter done in a production number with a fantasy twist:  characters point their fingers and various pieces of furniture pop out of the floor, including a chair, a set of stools, a baby grand piano, and a dining table complete with a dinner setting.  Catchy tunes, sticking in my head the past few days.

The faint odor of gunpowder still lingered in the air from the previous night's citywide pyrotechnics orgy as the Wayniacs reconvened in the basement, sans vacationing drummer Steve, for a last bash before Wayne himself disappears for three weeks. Some kinda major mojo was present, as we proceeded to burn down the house. Well, most of the time, anyway. Some of the brand new let's-try-this-and-see-if-it-works songs lowered the energy level a bit as we tried to figure out chords & stuff, but on the whole the music was majorly cookin'.

A lot of Dylan this time (what else is new). A third attempt at that Jayhawks song, which is starting to come together. First ever Moody Blues song.

I thought the Unusual Segue Award would go to "A Hard Day's Night" into "Tequila", but a few songs later its standing was usurped by "Black Peter" into "Sunshine Superman" into "I'm a Man". Hey, we were as surprised as anybody. We don't know this stuff's gonna happen until it does. We don't play the band, Ouija plays the band. The music plays us.

( Set list )
Good night!

No session last week due to 40% absences, but Alan returned from deepest darkest Africa a few days ago, so full band for once.

Had to do a Michael Jackson song. Alan pumped out the bass line to "Beat It" and we tried it out, silly at first but then we figured out how to make it groove and it turned into something outstanding. Who'da thunk it?

Another first-time's-the-charm was Neil Young's "Mr. Soul" -- suprisingly funky. Wayne's Indigo Girls song and "Little Wing" (the Clapton/Winwood version of Hendrix) didn't fare quite as well, but good try anyway. Making second appearances were Jefferson Airplane's "3/5 of a Mile in 10 Seconds" and the Jayhawks' "I'm Gonna Make You Love Me". Interesting transition of the night was the slow version of "All Along the Watchtower" into "Sixteen Tons", courtesy of the twisted mind of Ralph the Sax.

Started about 7:45, wound up about 11. Whew!

( Set list )

It's a GORGEOUS summer day in Minnesota!

Just thought you all should know.

Moving from Sunday afternoons to Tuesday evenings for the summer, to accomodate various vacation plans, means self-limiting time periods: starting at 7pm and not wanting to stay up too late on a school night. So no more 42-song marathons for a while.

Missing one bass player (Alan's in Africa for three weeks), and the lack was noticeable. And since Ralph's arrival was delayed, the first several songs sounded pretty thin. Did we let that stop us? Nawwwwwwwww.... ''

Highlights:  Steve Winwood mini-set; peppy versions of "Franklin's Tower," "Bertha" and "Love Minus Zero;"  surprisingly successful segue of two first timers -- Lovin' Spoonful's "Summer in the City" into Crosby's "Long Time Gone."

( Set list )

A mammoth 5-hour session on a rainy Sunday afternoon. Nobody seemed to want to stop. Toward the end, Wayne said our previous record was 42 songs; I counted 39 so far, so we did 4 more to break the record.

( Set list )

Then we bid temporary farewell to Alan, who is off to Africa again (Namibia and Ethiopia) for three weeks. We'll be bassless (tho not baseless) for a while, but will keep going nonetheless.

Summer plans include an on-the-lawn session for National Night Out (Aug. 4), and some Saturday in August a return engagement to the Pioneer Grill roadhouse in Wisconsin.

Sunday afternoon, the last of May and a fookin' gorgeous day outside. But playing music trumps being outside (especially since I had already spent a couple of hours sitting out on the front lawn that morning, reading the Sunday paper and doing the crossword), so four of us gathered in Wayne's basement again. Drummer Steve begged off in order to entertain visiting out-of-town parents.

Having taken a week off (I was at Wiscon, Alan was in Vermont visiting his daughter, Wayne was off having fun elsewhere), it took us a few songs before we caught fire, but after that there were many yowza! moments. On the other hand, the usual smattering of experiments yielded a few flops, but what the hey, nothing ventured and all that. At some point, Wayne's S.O. Kristine came downstairs and provided (a) audience, (b) requests, (c) guest vocals.

( Set list )
Fortunately, it was still light when we ended at 6:30, and I had biked over, so it was quite nice riding the Midtown Greenway through Seward and back to my place.

Usually the final day of a convention is kind of a write-off. You're busy packing up the room, checking out, dealing with transportation issues, trying to find people to say goodbye to. But this weekend, my final day at Wiscon was better than usual.

Yes, I slept late and missed the first programming slot, but I managed to poke my head into the last half of a Doctor Who panel. It was as interesting as a panel could be to someone in my brain-dead state. Swung by the con suite to fortify myself with a bagel, then headed back down to make one last swing through the dealer's room (this time looking at the pretty things people had made, rather than trying to read the title of every book in the room) and then headed into the big room for the Signout event.

Not that I had anything to be signed, but I knew there would be people there that I'd want to see. Sure enough, there was Eileen Gunn at a signing table and John Berry close at hand, so I chatted with them a while. They are probably going to have a very fine time in the next few days, as their plans are to visit Door County before returning to the west coast.

Next I spotted Laurie "Laurel" Winter, whom I hadn't had a chance to connect with all weekend, so went over and visited with her. What a sweetie. She was thrilled that her "Egg Horror Poem" was going to be printed in a 9th-grade textbook, right next to Pablo Neruda. Good company indeed!

Also chatted with Pat Murphy, checking to make sure no permanent damage had been done to her psyche by two other fans and myself downloading large expository lumps of fanhistory into her brain at one of last night's parties. She seemed to be none the worse for it. On the other hand, I seem to have established myself in her mind as Someone Who Can Sing, so I may have gotten myself roped into helping out with next year's opening ceremonies. Well, that's okay so long as I don't have to produce MidWest Side Story again.

Finally, took the opportunity to shake Geoff Ryman's hand and tell him how glad I was to have met him. He is warm and generous, besides being an incredible writer with a brilliant mind, and a crazed party animal. It's a good thing he's such a nice guy, or else we would all have to hate him for being so talented.

Ended my Wiscon by sitting in the hotel lobby for an hour or so, watching people come and go, occasionally snagging passersby (such as holyoutlaw, whumpdotcom, and mplsfish) and having pleasant conversations for as long as our sleep-deprived souls could manage it. And at last, the very generous and gracious Scott Custis drove me out to the park-and-ride so I could catch the Megabus back to Minneapolis.

My cat was glad to see me home safe.

Wow.

Was that ever fun.

Got dressed up in my double-breasted pinstripe suit that I bought way back before I gained weight, and hadn't been able to wear until the last year or so.  Knotted on my Darth Vader tie.  "You don't know the POWER of the Winsdor side of the force!"  Headed down to the main function room for the GoH speeches.  As they opened the door to all of us non-dessert-reception attendees, I noticed there were still unclaimed desserts; but being still full from dinner, declined to indulge.  Did grab some coffee, tho.

Geoff Ryman was remarkably subdued; he basically just read the introduction he had written to When It Changed, his forthcoming anthology of SF collaborations between writers and scientists, but it turned out to be particularly appropriate for Wiscon anyway.  Quite good, but I guess I was expecting pyrotechnics or bizarre ad libs.  Ellen Klages was even more surprising; based on her convention persona, I was expecting hilarity, but what she said was very personal and deeply touching  -- about growing into the role of writer and discovering Wiscon, and the influence those two developments had on each other.

The usual round of announcements was followed by presentation of the Tiptree awards, one to a writer who was unable to attend (and whose acceptance was read by Geoff), the second to Nisi Shawl, who thanked everybody, including her mother, who was in the audience and received a round of applause in turn.  For Nisi, the tradition chocolate portion of the award was replaced this year by a [bee bop a ree bop] rhubarb pie.  A crowd of writers marched on the stage and sang a celebratory song to the tune of the Mickey Mouse Club march, with more enthusiasm than skill but everybody in the audience was singing along so who cares.

Now -- party time!  One of the parties on the 6th floor was a "fancy dress" party (which people could interpret any way they chose), so the whole floor was strewn with people dressed up nicely.  There were beautiful dresses, men in tuxes or fancier, some outfits that bordered on costuming (Nevenah sported an ensemble, including a copper-colored wig, which made her look like a New Orleans madam), and some just with moderately nice clothes spiced up with a gorgeous scarf or a lot of sparkly jewelry.  Greg and Georgie, hosts of the FDP, were all out in period clothes, tho I wouldn't be able to tell you exactly what period.

Most of the parties were quite loud.  I frequently found myself not being able to hear a conversation right in front of me.  At least the FDP was cooler than the other spaces, having the sense to open the windows into the lovely spring night air.  The Beer And Marmalade party was the worst for noise level, as its low hard ceiling bounced all sounds back down and around.  But very late in the evening it became THE happening place.  It was there that Geoff Ryman was seen doing "keg stands" -- hands on the edges of the beer keg, feet on the wall, nothing touching the floor, and the beer tap being emptied directly into his mouth.  I went next door to Krushenko's and told people what he was doing, and Catherine Crockett said, "I can do that," and went over there and did her own keg stand, with feet even farther up the wall.

It wasn't all wild silliness; I did have some good conversations during the night, including a bunch of us "explaining" fandom to Pat Murphy, and singing excerpts from fan musicals to Geoff.  About 1:30am, the FDP wanted to shut down, so Greg announced "the end of our broadcast day" which prompted us to sing "The Star-Spangled Banner" and wave our arms like flags before being shooed out into the corridor.

At one point I found myself in the party room where it seemed lsanderson  had been all weekend, and he instructed me to take a cracker, spread it with a bit of cream cheese, pile on smoked salmon, a few chopped red onions and a thin quarter-slice of lemon, and while eating that pop a fresh caper into my mouth.  Oh!  My!  God!  What a fabulous combination of flavors. 

Roomie and I adjourned about 3:00am, and we weren't the last ones to leave.

Wow.  What a great Wiscon.

Got up too early.  Went to the fitness room and rode a bike to nowhere for twenty minutes while watching Madagascar penguins on the cartoon channel.  Came back, cleaned up, drank coffee, set out in search of a panel.  Found one on how writers put (or keep) the science in their science fiction; they talked about dealing with expository lumps, about resources (print & online) for keeping up with new scientific developments, about extrapolations.

Hit the con suite for oatmeal and a banana, and used the pocket program to check out the rest of the day's events. 

Went to Geoff Ryman's reading of a short story and a portion of a novel in progress; both were great, but even better was Ryman's delivery.  The man is a natural entertainer -- he didn't just read his stories, he performed them.  Put in pauses for pacing, talked in accents, used a lot of facial expressions and vocal inflection to flesh out the characters.

Afterwards, wandered by the bar and saw Jim Frankel sitting there.  Moseyed in and said, "What's up?"  He said he was just waiting for people to come by and say hello and sit down.  So I said hello and sat down.  A few other people did the same, one wanting to talk to him about submitting a novel, another about advice on agents.  I got into a conversation with the novel lady about Japanese language and culture, sparked by her Astro Boy pencil box and her remark that she had acquired it in Japan while taking a group of students there for a class.  Finally tore myself away to go catch the last half of a panel about Terry Pratchett, which was fun.

Ran into Jeanne & Scott, who invited me to have dinner with them if I didn't mind going someplace quick so they could both get back in time to do convention duties.  I agreed, and all three of us headed to a discussion (originally supposed to be a paper presentation) about the geographic implications of either relocating Wiscon or creating a Wiscon spinoff convention.  Much interesting discussion thereon.

Jeanne had an idea for dinner -- an informal restaurant that has a terrace overlooking Lake Monona.  We took a short drive to get there, had to wait maybe 5 minutes for a table (even tho the hostess said it would be a 20 minute wait) and then got to sit outside on this gorgeous late-spring day in Wisconsin.  The lake was sparkling blue and dotted with canoes and kayaks and a pleasure craft; the trees were that lovely shade of green that still holds the freshness of new spring leaves before they darken into the deep green of summer; the sky was laced with filmy clouds wafted by a gentle cool breeze.  We had scrumptious antipasto sandwiches and a good conversation, and I felt suffused with gratitude for the beautiful day and my good friends and the long years of enjoyment that they and this convention have given me.

Now back at the hotel, I'm about to freshen up and put on my festive Sunday evening duds and head out to the GoH speeches and the ensuing parties.

Tiptree auction.  Ellen Klages, auctioneer.  Scratch that -- Ellen Klages, stand-up comic disguised as an auctioneer.  Much silliness with Geoff Ryman modeling t-shirts and doing dramatic renditions of poster art.  Something involving a supersoaker jammed into his pants.  Hilarious to those who still think pee-pee jokes are funny.  But tons o' cash raised for the Tiptree fund.  A dress sold for $300 after a rock-paper-scissors contest between the last three bidders.

Parties.  Many.  Loud.  Late.

There's programming at 10:30 pm -- !  I'm on one of them.  I present an abridged version of my "Little Girls on the Hero's Journey" paper from last year's Mythcon, following another paper on Wonder Woman.  There were, oh, ten or twelve people in the audience.  My paper got some good feedback, and some people said they liked it.  Even generated some hallway conversations afterward. 

More parties.  Jim Frenkel and I asserting that we knew each other back in New York, but it was so long ago that it must have been before we were born.

It is finally so late in the evening that it's the next morning, and I'm running out of the ability to have fun.  Time to throw in the towel.  Good night.

Attended panel "True Names: Would a Fan by Any Other Handle Smell as Sweet?" about the use of usernames/handles/pseudonyms in various online communities -- why, why not, who, how many, etc.  Interesting, but my thought on the subject are still roiling, so best not to say more now.   Except that at one point I felt old and out-of-it and had to interrupt the panel to ask what they meant by the term "sock puppet."  (They told me, so no one has to reply here explaining it all to me, thanks.)

After that, spent the next time-slot browsing the art show & dealer's room.  Bought a book (about a group of Madison college students who gain super-powers) from the author, who turned out to be part of a writer's group based in my very own neighborhood in Mpls.  Met two of the other three members of the group, too, and we went through the friendly "Hi, neighbor" bit and compared notes about our dwelling spaces around the park.  Almost bought a volume of Finder from Hank Luttrell, but another shopper snapped it up just before I got there.  Oh well, I should probably just order it directly from Carla Speed McNeil -- more money directly into the creator's pocket that way.

The following hour was a toss-up between several choices.  I started out at a discussion of the works of GoH Geoff Ryman, but it soon got into heavy discussion of works of his that I hadn't read (I was more familiar with his earlier work, The Child Garden, The Warrior Who Carried Life, and Was), so I bugged out and found myself in a panel talking about robots and androids in SF.  A lot of the talk was about BSG's cylons and other recent examples, and I felt compelled to remind everybody about Isaac Asimov's robot mythos, which for a long time stood as the definitive statement on the theme of the robot in SF.

Dinner time.  Stood in the middle of the second floor hoping to run into people who wanted to go to dinner.  Was approached by holyoutlaw , who asked if I was standing around hoping to run into people who wanted to go to dinner.  We were soon joined by juliebata , who asked if were were standing around hoping to run into people who wanted to go to dinner.  Up came Simba who asked if -- "Yes," we interrupted.  So we four went out for dinner.