Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

Today was the second Music, Murals, and Margaritas festival, which took over Center Street (the street on the far side of the East Lot). After our experience last year with people parking in and crossing the East Lot (in part because the organizers did not realize we owned it), we took precautions this year, and it seemed to work.

( Warning Posts, Parking, and Poutine )

We did not begrudge some people coming over to stand in the shade of the large tree in the east lot, but I do admit to being nervous when some of them were smoking there, because I didn't want them setting the lot on fire. Fortunately, with the North Lyon County Fire Department paramedics there, had anything broken out, I reckon we would have had a fire truck on site in about three minutes.

As the sun set, the vendors broke down their booths and the musicians started getting louder and louder. As I compose this at 10 PM, they're still going strong. Based on what happened last year, I suspect they past the scheduled 10:30 PM end time. It's not our type of fun, but a bunch of people seem to be enjoying themselves. OTOH, given all of the alcohol on sale over their today, I think it's just as well that we're staying home. I somehow think the streets of Fernley aren't going to be that safe tonight.

Thanks to Mark Evanier, I've been introduced to Sonny and his remarkable music videos where he sings multi-part songs with himself and others. This one appears to be the most elaborate such collaboration yet.

( Getting By With... )

Among the many other videos to which the one above will lead you, he has an arrangement of "Seventy-Six Trombones" that is excellent (and apparently was really difficult to pull off, needing perfect coordination, according to Sonny's comments on the video).

Lisa and I went to Reno for shopping today, then out to Boomtown (the casino ten miles west of Reno at Exit 4) for the Al Stewart concert (with Dave Nachmanoff). I've seen Stewart twice before, but Lisa's never been to one of his concerts. In effect, she wasn't at this one either. Unfortunately, as soon as Nachmanoff started his warm-up set, Lisa realized that there was no way that the amplified sound and her tinnitus-hyperacusis tortured hearing were compatible, and, as we thought was likely, she left travelswithkuma with me and fled the ballroom. She tried listening to some of the concert from the lobby and back hallway, where at least the sound wasn't painfully loud, but there just wasn't much she could actually hear and appreciate. To her, most of the sound inside the room sounded like mud. It's not like she can't hear music — she'd listened to lots of recorded music — it's just that most amplified sound like you hear at a concert (and it's not as though to my ears as though Stewart was particularly loud) is viciously over-amplified to her and overwhelms her hearing. I suspect that if she heard Stewart and Nachmanoff up close with no amplification, she'd have no problem with it. Also, while she had to keep her ears covered most of the time during The Game Show Show, most of it was audible and intelligible to her, while this music was impossible.

Although I was worried about Lisa, she had told me that if she left, to stay and enjoy the concert, which I did. Stewart performed some songs I'd never heard him do before, mixed with some of his classics including my personal favorite, "Night Train to Munich," before finishing with the song most people know him for, "Year of the Cat." There was no encore, because they had to clear the room for the second showing, which was separately ticketed.

Although tonight was the monthly Lightning Loot drawing in Sparks, by the time we were passing the Nugget, it was 8:50, and as we recalled, you have to have "tagged in" with your club card no later than 8:45 in order to be in the 9 PM drawing, so we skipped this months drawing and simply headed home to Fernley.

Somtow Sucharitkul has posted a clip of the rehersal of the symphony he will be conducting in a few days. That was, he writes, a sight-reading first rehearsal. At that rate, the actual performance should be great, at least to my untrained ear.

I have a particular soft spot for Somtow. I really enjoyed his writing, which I encountered in Asimov's in the George Scithers days, he's the first author whose autograph I sought out (at L.A.con II in 1984, my first convention), and he and I were on a panel together at a convention in Phoenix years ago talking about making movies. (I was on it because of the work on my two amateur movies, The Zombie Legions and Those Darn Daleks.) Oh, and I seem to recall helping carry his luggage at an OryCon, or was it a Portland Westercon?

Tickets are on sale for as little as about $25, but getting to Thailand would be a bit tricky

I have a camera full of photos from our group expedition to see Spamalot last night as part of kproche's birthday. dsmoen has already posted about it along with photos, so that will do for now until I have time to deal with my camera.

In group shots, being one of the tall people, I'm usually at the back and therefore you can't see my costume; however, I am in one of dsmoen's group detail shots (behind the cut below), for which I thank her.

( Feeling Tensor? )

We had great seats -- right in the middle in rows 8/9/10 -- and our group of people in our "Knights of the Log Table" costumes caused a fair bit of stir and curiosity from the audience. I was amused at the range of reactions to our explaining what our group name was. Some people cracked up, while others gave us a completely blank look, saying, "What's a 'log table?'"

After the show, we gathered outside the theatre in front of the show's trailer, where several of the actors, including "King Arthur," Christopher Gurr, came out and talked with us and told us they could easily see us from the stage and that they really appreciated our enthusiasm. After that, we went to a nearby bar/restaurant, only to learn that it was booked up for a private cast party for the cast, crew, and sponsors of the show we'd just seen! But the manager was very nice and said we could sit outside in the patio area, which worked out just fine: first, it had been pretty warm in the theatre and I was happy to cool off, and second, it meant that those people from the production who wanted to come out and talk to us could do so without being obliged to do so. We had a number of very nice conversations with people out there.

I very much enjoyed the show. I'm not going to talk too much about the specifics, because there are actually spoilers involved and other people might want to see it without having the surprises revealed. But I was very amused by a point in Act 2 where they'd worked in a local reference and the audience went wild and stopped the show for at least a minute, and maybe longer, because it did seem like we'd managed to crack up the cast on stage, and you could see King Arthur working hard to re-compose himself and wait for the pandemonium to die down so he could continue, which just encouraged the audience to keep going. This, of course, is one of the reasons you need a live orchestra for these things -- you have to be able to adjust for what's happening in real time.

Anyway, happy birthday once again to kproche and thank you again for inviting us and for organizing the Knights, and thanks to you and all of the others who worked to make our costumes. I was delighted to be part of the group!

I guess it must have been the Dangerous Terrorist Handkerchief of Doom that SFO's security scanners ate that was the problem after all, for I had no difficulty at O'Hare this morning. Everything went very smoothly all the way. We were in no hurry to get breakfast in the hotel's included buffet. We had plenty of time to stop and refuel and then return the car. Having arrived at a relatively low period, there were no significant likes at check-in or Terrorization. Before checking my bag, I shed my jacket and sweater -- certainly needed in Chicago's chilly drizzle -- and stowed it in my checked luggage. I worried about the bag being overweight as I checked it. The scale stabilized: 50.0 pounds. Boy I'm good.

After clearing Terrorization, we headed through the Magical Mystery Tunnel and took a walk around the C concourse for the exercise, then settled in and read until the flight was called. The only minor fly in the ointment was that this flight was completely full, unlike the trip out, so I could not spread out and get any work done, particularly as the person in front of my reclined her seat to maximum, and even in Economy Plus that makes it challenging for me to get the screen open far enough to see it.

( Mamma Mia! No In-Flight ATC! )

I turned back to my book after the movie was over, and in a case of wonderfully good timing, reached the last page just as we were rolling up to the gate as SFO. Cheryl and I spent so much time looking through the exhibit on science fiction in popular culture along the concourse that by the time we'd made it to baggage claim, the flight had completely cleared and I had to get an attendant to free my back from the secured area.

It was bright, sunny, and warm in San Francisco, with high temperature records falling throughout the area, we later heard on the radio. I certainly had no need for the jacket I'd previously stowed in my bag. We hopped on the shuttle bus to the parking garage. Every time we take that shuttle, I look at where the people-mover ends at the Rental Car Center and wonder why they don't extend it another few hundred meters to Long Term Parking and get all of those shuttle buses off the road. (I note that it's almost the exact opposite of O'Hare, where the people mover takes people to long term parking, but passes right over the rental cars, for which you need to take a shuttle even though all they'd need to do is build a station on the existing track to connect to the airport system.)

Aside from having to grind through ten miles of stop-and-go traffic along US-101, the drive home was blessedly uneventful.

It may be only 5:20 local time, but I've been up since 4 AM local time and was in bed none too early last night, and I can't sleep in tomorrow on account of the SFSFC Board meeting. ( Yes, I do know that Windycon was close nearby and is this weekend ) Early to bed tonight, I think.

Update, 20:30: Rewrote pieces to include enough material to explain the title. I'd left out the part about the warm weather in the Bay Area in the original.