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Further OVFF Adventures!!
Nov. 8th, 2002 12:32 pmI think this will be more a ramble than a con report - though if you are reading this, they're a good chance you've read quite a few others by now.
The flights - Our journeys were thankfuly calm, but we did make a booboo. Batya had accidentally left a veggie knife in her knapsack, which was her carry-on bag. The capable guards from the Transporatation Security Agency spotted it, pulled her aside, and gave her the option of either checking the bag or throwing out the knife. We chucked the knife, and thanked them the professional manner in which they handled this. I was quite glad this happened, actually. It gave me the sense that the new regime is doing its job. At the very least, it sure beats how I may have felt if we got to OVFF and found we had taken a knife through. (Oh, and now Batya has an excuse to shop for a new kitchen knife. She likes knifes and she likes cooking, so this is a good thing.)
Supermarket envy - This happens every time I go on vacation. Since we often end up doing some food prep on vacation, we usually end up in a supermarket. And everyone else in America has better supermarkets than New Yorkers do. The space needed to offer wide aisles and wide selection is simply non-existent here. So upon setting food in the Kroger's near the hotel, the envy hit me. So mcuh variety. All that produce. National brands, regional brands, local brands, and many kosher. And there is nothing like this where I live. It may be the one amenity of life the big city has never really offered.
The hotel - This is really a good hotel for OVFF. It's got good function rooms, nice enough hotel rooms, and a wonderful lobby. There is a second room off the main lobby that makes a great place to talk and to sing, and it has a fireplace (albeit one which is essentially a gas range but larger). And those comfy leather couches! This is not why you choose a hotel, but a good lobby says something about how welcome you feel. It's not something we find at the Rye Town Hilton for Lunacon, that's a fact.
The filk - I noticed a few things. The first was that we didn't feel all that compelled to go to the concerts. What makes OVFF stand out to me is that you can filk to your heart's content and yet never set foot in the "concert hall." I know we clearly missed a good deal, but there's just so much going on, that you have to pick and choose. Besides, just hanging around "noodling," as Seanan noted, has a great appeal.
Next was the lack of new media filk. I'm told there were a couple of new Buffy filks around, and Bob Kanefsky's eeeeeevil Bab-5 reworking of Tom Smith's "Falling Free" cannot be forgotten. But it did strike me that the bulk of the filk I heard was inspired by general SF/F themes, or by literary sources. I still haven't heard any Matrix filk, and I only know of one Farscape filk (Missy Wilson's delightful "Brian Henson's Therapy"). Does this mean that the current crop of SF/F programs and films - aside from the LotR and Harry Potter adaptations - are leaving the filkfan community cold? Or are we just finding our muses in the pages of books right now?
Third, I got to sing. Usually in a circle - unless it's bardic, which is rare these days - I listen. I have written all of one filk of my own (although I do serve as Batya's creative consultant), and rarely seem to find the right song in Batya's filkbooks to claim for myself. In the evil circle Mary of the Keyboard ran (I do forget her last name), in the midst of a set of vampire songs, I found my moment. Missy - whose name will come up a third time, soon - wrote a vampire version of "When I'm 64," called "When I'm Possessed." Luckily for me, Batya doesn't know the original too well and thus I laid claim to it. Any chance to sing the Beatles, I would add. Next time, though, I would love to sing it in a Spike-ish voice, as it suits him quite nicely.
There were three other songs that I contributed voice to. One was the chorus of Seanan's "Carry Me Home." I'm sure most of the room was singing along with her, but the small circle around her seemed (to me, anyway) to be achieving a good deal of harmony. The second was Missy's "Midsummer Nights," her melding of Grease's "Summer Nights" with a certain Shakespeare play. Jordan was Oberon, Seanan was Titania, and I was among the male voices singing "tell me more, tell me more." I tried to get my voice into a lower range to little avail, but it was fun.
The third song was Batya's "Stop the Wheel of Time" to the tune of Billy Joel's "The Longest Time." Since Batya could not do all the doo-wop vocies herself (OK, so Billy couldn't either without recording equipment), a few of us helped out. I tried again to do a lower voice, and I think I almost succeeded. There is something to be said for songs that require multiple voices. Everyone can get in on the act. And of course the song is hysterical.
More thoughts as memories warrant.
The flights - Our journeys were thankfuly calm, but we did make a booboo. Batya had accidentally left a veggie knife in her knapsack, which was her carry-on bag. The capable guards from the Transporatation Security Agency spotted it, pulled her aside, and gave her the option of either checking the bag or throwing out the knife. We chucked the knife, and thanked them the professional manner in which they handled this. I was quite glad this happened, actually. It gave me the sense that the new regime is doing its job. At the very least, it sure beats how I may have felt if we got to OVFF and found we had taken a knife through. (Oh, and now Batya has an excuse to shop for a new kitchen knife. She likes knifes and she likes cooking, so this is a good thing.)
Supermarket envy - This happens every time I go on vacation. Since we often end up doing some food prep on vacation, we usually end up in a supermarket. And everyone else in America has better supermarkets than New Yorkers do. The space needed to offer wide aisles and wide selection is simply non-existent here. So upon setting food in the Kroger's near the hotel, the envy hit me. So mcuh variety. All that produce. National brands, regional brands, local brands, and many kosher. And there is nothing like this where I live. It may be the one amenity of life the big city has never really offered.
The hotel - This is really a good hotel for OVFF. It's got good function rooms, nice enough hotel rooms, and a wonderful lobby. There is a second room off the main lobby that makes a great place to talk and to sing, and it has a fireplace (albeit one which is essentially a gas range but larger). And those comfy leather couches! This is not why you choose a hotel, but a good lobby says something about how welcome you feel. It's not something we find at the Rye Town Hilton for Lunacon, that's a fact.
The filk - I noticed a few things. The first was that we didn't feel all that compelled to go to the concerts. What makes OVFF stand out to me is that you can filk to your heart's content and yet never set foot in the "concert hall." I know we clearly missed a good deal, but there's just so much going on, that you have to pick and choose. Besides, just hanging around "noodling," as Seanan noted, has a great appeal.
Next was the lack of new media filk. I'm told there were a couple of new Buffy filks around, and Bob Kanefsky's eeeeeevil Bab-5 reworking of Tom Smith's "Falling Free" cannot be forgotten. But it did strike me that the bulk of the filk I heard was inspired by general SF/F themes, or by literary sources. I still haven't heard any Matrix filk, and I only know of one Farscape filk (Missy Wilson's delightful "Brian Henson's Therapy"). Does this mean that the current crop of SF/F programs and films - aside from the LotR and Harry Potter adaptations - are leaving the filkfan community cold? Or are we just finding our muses in the pages of books right now?
Third, I got to sing. Usually in a circle - unless it's bardic, which is rare these days - I listen. I have written all of one filk of my own (although I do serve as Batya's creative consultant), and rarely seem to find the right song in Batya's filkbooks to claim for myself. In the evil circle Mary of the Keyboard ran (I do forget her last name), in the midst of a set of vampire songs, I found my moment. Missy - whose name will come up a third time, soon - wrote a vampire version of "When I'm 64," called "When I'm Possessed." Luckily for me, Batya doesn't know the original too well and thus I laid claim to it. Any chance to sing the Beatles, I would add. Next time, though, I would love to sing it in a Spike-ish voice, as it suits him quite nicely.
There were three other songs that I contributed voice to. One was the chorus of Seanan's "Carry Me Home." I'm sure most of the room was singing along with her, but the small circle around her seemed (to me, anyway) to be achieving a good deal of harmony. The second was Missy's "Midsummer Nights," her melding of Grease's "Summer Nights" with a certain Shakespeare play. Jordan was Oberon, Seanan was Titania, and I was among the male voices singing "tell me more, tell me more." I tried to get my voice into a lower range to little avail, but it was fun.
The third song was Batya's "Stop the Wheel of Time" to the tune of Billy Joel's "The Longest Time." Since Batya could not do all the doo-wop vocies herself (OK, so Billy couldn't either without recording equipment), a few of us helped out. I tried again to do a lower voice, and I think I almost succeeded. There is something to be said for songs that require multiple voices. Everyone can get in on the act. And of course the song is hysterical.
More thoughts as memories warrant.
