FIGMO's Follies

It's official.

Due to the COVID-19 threat, we are officially postponing Consonance to a date sometime later in 2020.
If you cannot make whatever date we pick for rescheduling, you can either request a refund or roll your membership over to Consonance 2021.

If you have any more questions, feel free to ask any of us on the concom. We are very sorry about this, but we'd rather err on the side of caution than risk losing (permanently) a large chunk of our membership.
Regards,

--Lynn Gold
Chair, Consonance 2020

Jordin coded yesterday (Wednesday) afternoon. From what I can gather, he'd had heart valve replacement surgery and never woke up from it.

This was a shocker. I didn't know about the heart surgery, and I was shocked to hear he'd died. Other than the valve, Jordin was in pretty good shape.

I am still reeling. He was kind of a mentor to me in the filk community. He showed me how to deal with difficult situations with grace and dignity. He was also a gentleman, a gentle soul, and had a terrific sense of humor.

My sympathy goes out to Mary Kay Kare and to the rest of his family.

Those of you who speculated that I'd already come up with a parody were right.

I performed it several times at Fiestacon and got laughs. Trying to moonwalk on carpeting while wearing rubber-soled shoes isn't easy.

Anyhow, for those of you who are curious...( the parody is behind this cut-tag to hide it from those who might squick out at the thought. )

My boss at Omneon and I have a running half-joke about how she has relaxing weekends while mine always either involve "death or taxes." My first three weekends involved Warren's parents' taxes; the weekend after that I attended a mass for Warren's late brother. Last weekend I signed my e-mail to her saying "FINALLY...a weekend without death or taxes."

The next day I learned otherwise. Michael Moore, the DJ on our sister station, KRTY, asked me "Are you going to Maria's funeral?"

"Maria WHO?" I replied.

"Maria Carrillo -- in Traffic."

"She DIED???!?"

Maria Carrillo, KRTY's Traffic Manager, had collapsed while playing bingo the prior weekend. Turns out she'd had a heart attack, then a stroke, then another heart attack, and was finally taken off life support earlier that week. There were no notices around the station, which shocked me, because she performed a vital role for the organization. Even though she officially was in charge of KRTY's logs she often worked on ours at KLIV. One of her sons had even worked in sales at the station, so I especially felt obligated to pay my respects since I knew one of the principal mourners. I went to her viewing last Sunday. It was really sad. I chatted with her older daughter, Maria, and with Jose, her son. Jose had to excuse himself to help his grandmother to the casket. Yee-ouch. Warren couldn't bear to go in. "I've had more death than I can handle." I didn't blame him.

This Friday my boss was in the Sunnyvale office. "Let's keep our fingers crossed," she said.

Then drfilk died. Yeouch. John wasn't at all on my "people I'd expect to die early" radar. It sounded like he was healing well, then kaboom. When I first saw pondside's post I couldn't believe it. I'd hoped I was misinterpreting something. I wish that were the case.

I don't know what I could say about drfilk that hasn't been said. I'm in shock.

I don't know how many years I've known John, but I can't remember not knowing him from the time I started getting active in filking. I remember him being a regular at Musicon and an occasional Worldcon attendee. One year he even rode his motorcycle out to Los Angeles to attend Westercon.

John was always fun to talk with, friendly, warm, and just plain interesting. When he and hsifyppah started doing music together I got to see what he could do musically in a brighter light. He was a fantastic musician, not just because he played well, but because he made others around him sound good by just being with them. I was ecstatic to hear he and hsifyppah were Interfilk Guests at Concertino. John provided Brooke with a foundation she could relax upon to do her music, and Brooke returned the favor by causing folks to notice John as a musician.

My heart goes out to Brooke, John's family and closest friends, and to anyone who knew him. Those of you who didn't know him missed out on a great experience.

I am soooo glad I went! I don't feel like doing a fine-grained detailed report, but here's the summary:

• My fever broke over the weekend.
• The side effects of the prednisone continued. This morning I felt like crying for no reason. Luckily, I had food next to me (a cup of yogurt) to help counteract this.
• All weekend I kept forgetting lyrics I can normally remember in my sleep (thank you prednisone!). OTOH, with Frank Hayes as TM, I had lots of fun "blaming" him every time I screwed up.
• hsifyppah delivered a nice-sized bag of the extra strength sugar-free Fisherman's Friend (yaay!!!).
• I got to see lots of folks I haven't seen in a long time, and I got to know some other folks better. This is always A Good Thing.
• The guests were all fantastic, too. (Did I mention I'd never heard Frank Hayes perform live before?)
• Tess's service dog, Dandy, is incredibly adorable and a total charmer. If I can, I'd like to introduce him to a "single white female" next year. ;-)
• The con suite was short on diet soda, but shaddyr's chili made up for it.
• I wrote a new song this weekend! I even got to perform it with a really great "scramble" band (Mark Osier and lemmozine). I'll post the lyrics in another message when I'm feeling more energetic.
• I didn't make it to Cash and Carry for my DaVinci Gourmet Sugar-Free Syrup pilgrimage -- which was a shame 'cuz they're on sale.

While my plane was on the ground and taxiing this afternoon, I checked my cell phone messages and got the results of Thursday's CT scan of my head. It turns out my maxillary sinuses (the ones on the cheeks) are blocked and the solution to this involves surgery.

I could use help in the form of extra vocalists, especially those of you who can read music and hold a part. (capplor, I'm especially hoping for help, of corpse, and yes, that's a hint!)

This is one of those rare moments where I get to merge aspects of my live that don't normally have anything to do with one another.

I am part of a team documenting the upcoming release of a well-known database product. As part of getting up to speed and testing features on the product, I need to create some kind of database. As many of you know, I've been in the process of recording a CD over the last few years, and it's getting closer and closer to being done.

What I need is for folks to e-mail me their contact info to "figmo @ rahul.net" (remove the spaces; I stuck them in to foil spambots) if they want to be on the mailings for CDs, appearances, and such for me. Specifically:

Name:
Mailing address:
Phone:
E-mail address:
Favorite song or routine (if applicable):
Why you're on my list (select all that apply): CD info? Appearances at cons in your area? Comedy appearances?

Thanks in advance!

It was a success. By now everyone who cares has read all the reports about how good the concerts were and all that, so I'm not going to reiterate.

I knew the northwest had a strong filk community years ago when I got drafted to run filking at Westercon in Seattle years ago because the "usual suspects" didn't want to run it. Here are some of the things nobody else mentioned:

• This is the first filk con other than the one in the UK where I've been consistently up before 11am. The Saturday morning brunch was worth the price, especially with the CD. The bacon at the brunch was especially good -- it was nice and thick and went way more quickly than the hotel had expected it to.
• The concert room was packed.
• The "scramble bands" (at other cons they've been called "instabands") were a success. I was lucky enough to be lined up with mnemex and two girls (Jovanie and Anne) who were referred to as "The Tardis Girls" because they were wearing coordinated Dr. Who t-shirts all weekend. All four of us could carry a tune and stay on pitch, so we did the obvious and sang a cappella (to rave reviews!). The girls were amazingly quick at learning "Rebel Queen." It didn't hurt that I had the right kind of USB cable on me to go from mnemex's MP3 player to the girls' laptop unit.
• I got to spend lots of time hanging around with filkferengi, who I've known for years from going to GAFilk and other cons.
• The con suite was excellent. A bigger variety of soda (especially sugar-free) would have been nice, but if that's my only "complaint," that's pretty good.
• The songbook sing-along worked, too. I never thought I'd see the day where I'd be leading a sing-along of "L. Ron Ron."

Most of all, this convention had a really nice "vibe" to it. People who I'd have expected to snip at each other were very social and friendly. Heck, everybody was friendly.

Even though it was the first Conflikt, this convention had a "personality," complete with mascot (the Vixy frog) and an "official" color (green, esp. emerald green).

The criticism I have is really tweaky stuff:

• The hotel restaurant does have sugar-free pancake and waffle syrup; it'd be nice if they had some of the packets of it at the brunch next year.
• The font for the names on the badges was too small.
• It'd be nice if there was an alternative to clip-on badges. I would rather wear mine around my neck than have to deal with a clip because clips frequently come off of me.

In the end, I already bought a membership for next year, which says it all.

We just got the news at Conflikt about Greg McMullan perishing in a house fire. My heart goes out to kyttn and the rest of their family.

I've always viewed Greg (filkergem) as a bastion of sanity with his posts about things like exercise and dealing with his parents' illnesses. I'm in shock right now; I suspect it'll hit me harder later.