Comfortably Dumb

Ah.

Mon, 28 Dec 2009 18:41:41 GMT

It's been a good Christmas so far... and there's more to come.

It started with picking up Seanan at the airport on Christmas day, and having a great rehearsal with Betsy. The show on Saturday at Wayward was incredibly fun, and I was amazed to see how many folks came out to see us on the day after Christmas. Thanks everyone for coming!

We have a house full of loved ones now, with gfish now permanently back home, and tereshkova2001 is returning tomorrow to make it a complete set. It's warm and cozy and geeky.

Because everyone was scattered about and doing things on the traditional Christmas day, we're saving our official Agora household Christmas for tomorrow. Tonight? GORN CANNON!

Here's a fun Christmas story. Well, fun for me anyway:

We're all sitting around the TV, watching "Die Hard" because Seanan hadn't ever seen it. Plus, it's a Christmas movie. A completely different kind of Christmas movie than Grinch or Wonderful Life, but a Christmas movie nonetheless. Plus, Alan Rickman. You can't go wrong with Alan Rickman. (Side note: We all want a sweatshirt now.)

So we're watching it from a DVD, which is playing on the Playstation 3. The PS3 is great for watching DVDs in terms of sound and picture quality, but the pain of having to use the PS3 game controller to pause or rewind a DVD is nearly unbearable. When you pick up the controller, it's either already powered itself off to save battery charge, or you accidentally bump one of its soft finger triggers and inadvertently skip forward a chapter.

We've got a fantastic universal remote, but the Playstation doesn't have an infrared transceiver, so you can't use the remote with it. Each time someone curses at the PS3 controller, I have to explain that I need to get the proper "doohickey" (technical term) that lets me control the PS3 videos with the remote.

So Vixy takes a present out from under the tree and makes me open it, despite my protests that it's two days early, since we're not doing presents until Tuesday. And what do you know, it was an honest to goodness doohickey!

After industrial-lasering the blister packaging open, I was worried about having to interrupt the playback of Die Hard to make the doohickey work. I figured it would need some kind of setup or configuration. But the amazing thing is, I plugged it in during the movie and it just worked. Plug in the doohickey, and suddenly I can pause and unpause the movie in progress without touching the game controller. That's what amazed me: A tech gadget that actually Just Worked Exactly Like You'd Expect It To. No rebooting the console, no having configure it via setup menus, nothing. Just plug it in, and poof it works. Now that's a good OOBE. (We're going to disregard for a moment that a better OOBE would have been for the PS3 to have had an IR transcever built-in in the first place.)

Vixy is made of awesome. But you all already know that.

Anyone else have good OOBE's this Christmas?

Thanks everyone!

Wed, 23 Dec 2009 21:43:47 GMT

Thanks, everyone, for coming to the Wayward last Saturday and making it a great night for us all. We had a fantastic time! Angelica and Athrylis had a great time and were so happy to play for everyone.

Remember that we've got Seanan coming up at Wayward this Saturday!

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Wayward Times Two!

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 05:43:40 GMT

Reminders of upcoming gigs!

Saturday, December 19th, 7pm
Vixy & Tony are playing at Wayward Coffeehouse with Sunnie and Betsy, as well as very special guests, the wonderful and sweet ASH Productions! They're making a special trip up here to Seattle just to sing with us. They're just a delight to watch. Come out and see us all play together! Details here.

Saturday, December 26th, 8pm
Vixy & Tony will be the backup band for Seanan McGuire. You will get songs, and likely readings from her recently-published novel Rosemary and Rue and its upcoming sequels. Again, we will be taking over Wayward Coffeehouse for this purpose, and again, she's making a special trip to Seattle for this. Don't miss it! Details here.

Then it'll be January, and time for Conflikt, followed immediately by the UK Filk con! Whew, what an exciting winter we've managed.

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p/g

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 21:03:45 GMT

Orycon was great! There were lots of good friends and lots of good music.

Our concert went quite well, despite struggling with some minor audio technical problems during the first few songs of the set. Fortunately, we worked out the technical issues, thanks to Frank Hayes stepping up and being a great roadie, and thanks to the fact that I can play really loud if I need to when the amp cuts out. We did a mix of original songs and covers; here we are covering our friend Seanan's song Dear Gina.

Update: The rest of the videos that Rhaevyn Fae shot of us at Orycon are here.

I had Marian Call briefly using Monkey Brains Studios last night to add a few extra tracks to her current album project. The musicians were herself, her brother, and her Mom. Marian played toy piano. Her brother played banjo, trumpet and nose trumpet, and her Mom played flute and turkey baster.

How do you play a turkey baster? You fill it part way with water, blow across the top and squeeze the bulb, and you get a sound that's halfway between little brown jug and slide whistle. How do you play a nose trumpet? You remove the plungers from the valves, then position your nose across the holes in the tops of the valves, with one nostril blowing across each of two valves. This makes a nice whistly chord. I love having a studio.

Tonight, I play guitar for Marian at The Mandolin Cafe in Tacoma, starting at 7pm. Please come! It's going to be great, and she's got some wonderful new songs for you to hear.

Vixy and I plan to start recording for our next album fairly soon. I need to finish up mixing a few of Sooj's songs that we recently recorded at Monkey Brains first. A few of the songs from these sessions are already done and are available: Lucia, September, and most recently Were-Owl. I'm very proud of the work we've done on these songs, and I can't wait to finish the rest of them and show them off.

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Orycon!

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 13:46:33 GMT

Vixy & Tony are off to Orycon today! We have a concert on Saturday night. Will we see you there?

Remember they are in a different hotel this year.

I have only ten SMS messages left on my 200-message plan this month. Partly a side-effect of all that coordinating with Hank Green for that show last weekend (which was awesome, by the way). I usually use text messages for at-con coordination with people, but that'll run me out of messages real fast. So, um, voicemails only for this con, please. (Insert rant here on how evil it is for companies to charge extra for SMS text messages when there's no remaining technological reason to do so.)

Thanksgiving was great, and I have much to be thankful for this year. If you're reading this, you're very likely one of the people I'm thankful to know.

Love to everyone. See you at the con!

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Hank's Venue

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 22:56:20 GMT

There is a venue! Here's Hank Green's official announcement.

A complete lack of free places in Seattle meant that he opted to rent a community center and ask for donations at the door, which should work out great, it always does. The place he really wanted was already booked, but the one he got on short notice is really nice. You might remember it as the location of that great Wendy Rule/Skinny White Chick show from September of last year. It only holds 150 people, though, so come early! Show starts at 6pm this coming Saturday, November 21st, at the Sunset Hill Community Center, 3003 NW 66th St, in Ballard.

Rumor has it that Molly Lewis will be there, too! You might remember her accompanying Jonathan Coulton on Ukelele at recent Seattle shows at The Moore and The Triple Door.

In the meantime, please come see me and Marian Call on Thursday night at House Cerulia or Friday night at Cafe Allegro in the U-District. All of these shows are going to be great! I'm really excited!

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A call to arms! Or at least fingers.

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 21:13:22 GMT

Thanks everyone, for coming out to the house concert at Cerulia last Sunday! We had a fantastic time, and I was especially glad to share the stage with CD and Brooke. Remember that I'm playing guitar for Marian Call this Thursday evening, same place!

Speaking of gigs, I've got a friend of a friend, musician/blogger/environmentalist Hank Green, who needs help finding a venue. He's been touring around, playing at colleges, parks, community centers, that kind of thing, doing free shows. He's been finding places to play, mostly playing it by ear and getting lucky. He's coming to Seattle this coming weekend, November 21st-23rd, and would like to find a place to play that will handle about 100-200 people on short notice, somewhere hopefully indoors out of the rain.

I know of a lot of great places, but none who can handle that many for *free*. Our fallback position is to crash GasWorks, but I don't know if that'll work out, so we'd like to find something better. He's been trying to get something worked out at UW, which would be the most ideal, but the short notice is hampering him in those particular efforts. (If you've got an "in" at UW, speak up!)

Please reply with suggestions and ideas! I'll point Hank here to reply to questions and such.

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Schedule update

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:47:58 GMT

It's been a good Fall season for us so far. Good times with good friends and loved ones. Staying employed, knock on wood, and staying generally healthy, knock on wood. Gorgeous fall colors around town, and the rain has officially settled in to Seattle for the season.

We've got gigs coming up, including a new one just announced on the day after Christmas:

Sunday, November 15th
Vixy and Tony, with violinist Sunnie, and cellist Betsy will be playing at House Cerulia this coming Sunday afternoon. We'll be welcoming special guest CD Woodbury, a guitarist with more chops than a butcher shop. We might even welcome yet another super special guest to play with us at some point during the evening, come find out how the heck we're going to have six people performing in that living room and still have room for an audience. Speaking of which, if you're planning on coming, please RSVP to House Cerulia as soon as possible so that they know how many people to plan for. Click here for more details.

Thursday, November 19th, Friday, November 20th, Tuesday, December 1st
Also coming up at Cerulia House, I'll be playing guitar for Marian Call on the Thursday following the Vixy & Tony concert. I'm also playing guitar for her at Cafe Allegro on the 20th, and in Tacoma on December 1st. She's awesome, of course, and there are some great new songs in her set list, so come see us play! Hit up her page for all the details.

Saturday, November 28th
Orycon is coming! Are you ready? Details here.

Saturday, December 19th
Vixy & Tony return to Wayward Coffeehouse, again with our own personal string section, but this time welcoming very special guests, our friends ASH Productions, making a special trip up to Seattle just to play with us. Don't miss this rare opportunity to see these sweet, wonderful sisters blend harmonies as smooth as silk. Details here.

Saturday, December 26th
Just announced! Vixy & Tony will be the backup band for Seanan McGuire, our good friend, author, and songwriter whose recently-published urban fantasy novel, Rosemary and Rue, is getting rave reviews. Wayward Coffeehouse will play host to a combined concert of Seanan's songs and readings from her books. Details here.

Whew! That's a lot of stuff, and that's not even mentioning the conventions coming up early next year that we're really excited about. I thought this fall/winter season was going to calm and relaxing. What happened?

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Pegasus 2009

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 00:57:27 GMT

Pegasus 2009 Awards are over. Thank you so much, everyone. We are floored. Every time we get nominated, I look at the field and I'm convinced that everyone else in the category is much more deserving of the award. We're so honored.

Among the highlights of the weekend so far was Rand & Adam from Ookla the Mok interrupting our acceptance speech Kanye West-style with, "I'm 'a let you finish, but Beyonce had one of the best videos of all time!" Pretty much the perfect gag.

Here is the full award list for 2009:

Best Filk Song
The Wreck of the Crash of the Easthill Mining Disaster by Brooke Lunderville

Best Classic Filk Song
Still Catch the Tide by Talis Kimberley

Best Performer
Heather Dale & Ben Deschamps

Best Writer/Composer
Vixy & Tony

A Little Bit Country (2009 floating category)
Stray Dog Man by Bill Sutton

A Little Bit Rock and Roll (2009 floating category)
Six-String Love by Vixy & Tony

Off to the Interfilk Auction with us, then the huge filk circle of doom. There's still two nights worth of filking left to do!

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Achy Breaky Earworm

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 18:53:39 GMT

Today's Straight Dope is a very interesting one about earworms. Much was stuff we already knew (the "itch" concept, for example), but a couple of items amused me, including this one:

In the early 1980s Chicago parking garage bigwig Myron Warshauer used earworms as the basis of a patented "musical theme floor reminder system," in which a different well-known song plays in each floor's elevator lobby. When you come back hours later and can't remember what floor you parked on, all you have to do is pay attention to the tune that's (theoretically) still running through your head - the song titles are listed opposite the buttons in the elevators.

In other news, Brütal Legend is hilarious, we're going to see Alton Brown speak tonight, and OVFF is next weekend. Who's going?

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Jobs!

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 17:19:26 GMT

My company is hiring for a Director of Information Technology. I'm also told we're looking for a temporary Web Developer position that may go permanent (it's Windows ASP/SQL/Dotnet type stuff). They pay well, the atmosphere is relaxed and positive, and I like the people I work with. I get a decent referral bonus, so ping me if you want me to submit your resumé for you.

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Successful evening

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 02:00:30 GMT

Last night's Shindig at Wayward was a huge amount of fun and was well-attended. Thanks everyone for coming, and making it awesome! We got to talk to a lot of new people, which made us very happy.

Edit: Pictures here.

Vixy and I don't have any local public appearances scheduled for October, but it doesn't mean we're not busy. We're playing a private party for a friend and also heading to OVFF near the end of the month. We're really looking forward to it!

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You can't take the C8H10N4O2 from me

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 19:14:28 GMT

Reminder!

Vixy and Tony, with violinist Sunnie, will be playing the Sereniversary at Wayward Coffeehouse in Greenwood this coming Saturday. It's a Browncoat-themed party with lots of fun stuff happening. Party officially begins around 6pm, with music starting at 7pm. Come watch Broenwynn shout out the trivia contest questions without using a microphone!

There are also a few other upcoming events on our calendar starting in November, check it out!

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Monkey Brains!

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 06:57:32 GMT

omnisti calls to my attention the existence of the Monkey Brains line of Oatmeal products*.

And Jeff, God of Biscuits has posted a weekend recap of the events of the weekend of events of things happening.

I have a Monkey Brains t-shirt on the way, and life is good. :-)

* I'm not endorsing or trying to advertise the product, I'm just amused because that's the name of my recording studio.

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Digital is so much easier.

Sun, 13 Sep 2009 02:23:25 GMT

So we're in Jeff Bohnhoff's legendary Mystic Fig studios this weekend, with cadhla, harmonyheifer and it_aint_easy, recording tracks for the Bohnhoff's next parody album. Jeff and Maya, you see, alternate between doing serious albums and parody albums, and we're on the parody side of the clock this year. Jeff's already going to Hell for parodying Stairway and Smoke on the Water, so now he's just digging himself deeper with a Bohemian Rhapsody parody.

It's funny how things always come full circle. The original recording contained 180 separate overdubs for its operatic bridge, causing technical problems because of the excessive number of bounce-downs required. A bounce is when you take several finished tracks from a recording and permanently combine them into a single track, so that you free up more tracks on the tape machine for recording more parts. This is a perfectly valid way to work, but it means you can never go back and edit just one of the bounced parts; you've got to be absolutely sure those tracks are perfect before you start the bounce. Queen worked on a very-modern-for-its-time 24-track system, and the most modern tape-based recording systems can do 48, 96, or more tracks before you need to start bouncing.

You'd think that computer recording technology would solve this, and it does... kinda. Modern recording software allows virtually unlimited tracks, but it introduces problems of its own. We're only about half done with the tracking on this thing, and Jeff's top-of-the-line computer is already breaking under the stress, occasionally running out of memory and crashing when we add another track. I've never actually seen a computer-based recording project so large that it actually needed bounce-downs, but I'm wondering if Jeff's actually going to need to resort to that ancient technique just to keep the project file running.

Other than that, the session is going well, the song is hilarious, we're all having a huge amount of fun, and it's an absolute kick to hear the results played back; it sounds amazing.

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Job!

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 21:11:33 GMT

My company is hiring for a tech support engineer position. They pay well, the atmosphere is relaxed and positive, and I like the people I work with. I get a decent referral bonus, so ping me if you want me to submit your resumé for you.

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Fictional Manifesting

Sun, 06 Sep 2009 22:55:09 GMT

There should be a name for this practice: the act of creating an entire retail company with the same name as a fictional company portrayed in a movie. This is something distictly different from simple Merchandising, where you create obvious tie-in products.

The prime example of this practice is Viacom's calculated and deliberate creation of the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company, which didn't exist until after the movie. I can think of one other off the top of my head: Willy Wonka chocolates. But I'm having trouble coming up with others, even though I know they exist. Anyone have examples?

As much as Lucas is a genius at merchandising, we still haven't seen the Incom space fighter company appear yet, although I wouldn't put it past him to have something like that on a back burner somewhere. Perhaps he's just waiting for Branson to get the tech perfected.

Discussing this here in the car, omnisti and I have decided this practice should be called Fictional Manifesting. If no one knows of a better term, or a term that's already in use, I propose this be adopted as the standard term.

Then we can use the term for cross-lnking in Wikipedia.

Book Signings

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 06:53:47 GMT

Just a quick note to let all of our Bay Area friends know that Vixy & Tony (as well as our friends SJ Tucker, Betsy Tinney, Brooke Lunderville, and Amy McNally) will be joining Seanan McGuire at her book signing parties this weekend in Santa Clara and San Francisco. Although these gatherings are mostly about Seanan's new book, Rosemary and Rue, there will also be some music by the aforementioned artists. All are welcome! Click on the links for details of each party:

Illusive Comics in Santa Clara, Friday at 7pm.

Borderlands Books in San Francisco, Saturday at 5pm.

See you all there!

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Pterippi

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 19:24:31 GMT

Pegasus 2009 Ballot is up. Some names on there you might recognize, and some really tough choices in all the categories.

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Food for the soul!

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 06:44:38 GMT

Thanks so much for coming to Soulfood on Friday night! It was fantastic. There was so much energy in the air, and when Clint got on stage to drum with us, the energy just went through the roof. So many awesome people were there... we met and talked to a lot of great folks we hadn't met before, and saw lots of good friends too. When a night like that can be so amazing with only a couple of days notice... wow, imagine what we could do with only one days' notice!

We love getting the chance to play with Sooj and Betsy so much. I can't remember what it was like without them around.

Bonus: soulfood was doing streaming video, here's last night's stream...
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6

Our next scheduled show (unless something sudden comes up again) is the Sereniversary at Wayward on September 26th. That will be a great opportunity to see Vixy & Tony playing with Sunnie, the wonderful fiddler who you can hear on two of the songs on Thirteen.

Speaking of schedules, has anyone been using the Vixy & Tony .ICS calendar file we posted on the Schedule page a while back? It's been malfunctioning on and off recently, and in an attempt to fix it, we've changed the URL and the script that generates it. The new one seems to work for the moment, so give that one a try. See the Schedule page for details.

See you all in September!

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Sudden Kitten Sundae!

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 01:41:14 GMT

With only a couple of days' notice, we've got a show coming up! This Friday at 8pm, Vixy & Tony, SJ Tucker, and Betsy Tinney are joining forces again to become Kitten Sundae at Soulfood Books in Redmond. We promise to use our powers only for good!

Who's coming?

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Post-Faerieworlds

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 06:19:58 GMT

The last day of Faerieworlds was fantastic. At the end of the day, we all gathered at the campground with our Ash, Erosong, Coppermoon, Cerulia, and Sidhehaven friends. Singing songs around the campfire gains a slightly surreal air when you have a string section instead of just a guitar. As the sparks from the campfire floated into the sky and the nighttime chill closed in around us, drawing us closer to the fire, I was reminded that sometimes the best and most magical moments from a festival are the ones that aren't part of the event itself, rather they're the result of the gathering of people. That's really what these sorts of things are always about: simply getting everyone together so that awesome things can happen.

As promised, here's a picture of Torrey and Vixy as a perfect Jareth and Sarah, posing with Toby Froud.

My fondest thanks to Emilio and Kelly for having us in your Realm this year. It was magical.

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Faerieworlds!

Sun, 02 Aug 2009 20:46:26 GMT

Faerieworlds last day today! We're prepping to head back out to the site now.

We've had a fantastic time so far, and met many wonderful new people and saw amazing sights. Highlights so far: Toby Froud walking around operating a 40-foot-tall articulated puppet, seeing Faun and Delhi 2 Dublin, and seeing Vixy and Torrey dressed as the most perfect Sarah and Jareth pair you could imagine. Anyone with good pictures of the latter, please comment on this thread and I'll put links here.

There were so many wonderful costumes I can't begin to describe them all. Many of them (including Torrey's Jareth) seemed to be in defiance to the incredible, oppressive heat. There was a gentleman in a fantastic black and white death/spectre outfit with full robes and face prosthetics who remained in full character the entire time. He must have lost ten pounds over the course of the weekend. At the same time, many of the costumes were perfectly appropriate for the weather, with more beautiful bare and/or painted skin than you can imagine.

Tricky Pixie played two fantastic sets with Vixy joining them, and we loved hanging out with our loved ones for so much of the festival. Gaia Consort was awesome, too, and we're hoping to catch their second set today. It's been wonderful spending the weekend with Sooj, K, Alec, Sunnie, Betsy, and Dave, and it was particularly wonderful playing with Betsy, Sooj, and Sunnie in our set on Saturday.

To those who came to the Vixy & Tony set, and/or bought CDs, thanks so much for coming! We loved playing for all you new folks, and we hope you enjoyed yourselves as much as we did, and that you enjoy the CD. Please say "hi" in comments, we'd love to hear from you!

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Wow!

Sun, 26 Jul 2009 20:47:43 GMT

Last night's Kitten Sundae show at A Gathering Grove was incredibly fun! The energy was amazing, you were all so awesome. Thank you so much, everyone, for coming and making the evening special. The people at the piano bar next door didn't know what they were missing.

Coming up we've got... <looks at calendar> OMG we've got Faerieworlds this weekend! That's crazy. Vixy & Tony are scheduled to play a short set at 3:15 on Saturday at the Village Stage, joined by Sooj, Betsy, and Sunnie. I'm told that the word "schedule" in this context means more of a loose approximation of a vague idea, and that if you're coming to Faerieworlds you'll need to keep an open mind with regards to such things. In other words, be prepared for schedule changes and check at the venue for updated information. There's also Tricky Pixie followed by Gaia Consort at Friday 4:15 on the Main Stage, and Tricky Pixie at 1pm on Saturday at the Main Stage. Don't miss it!

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Tricky Pixie in Seattle!

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 18:09:28 GMT

So who's going to the Tricky Pixie Concert and CD Release Party tomorrow?

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