Seeing Jonathan Coulton at the Lula Lounge tonight!

Woohoo! Jeff and I are meeting Jodi and James at the Lula Lounge tonight to see Jonathan Coulton perform. I've never seen Coulton live, so I'm pretty excited. Thanks to Tom Jeffers for giving me the heads-up about this show -- he and others are going to see it this weekend.

Paul and Storm will be opening for him. From their JoCopedia page: "Paul Sabourin and Greg 'Storm' DiCostanzo are an Arlington, Virginia-based comedic musical duo. They had formerly been half of the a cappella group Da Vinci's Notebook. When that group went on hiatus the two struck out on their own, with Paul playing keyboard and penny whistle and Storm on the guitar. " You can find out more about them on their blog.

I got hooked on Jonathan Coulton's songs after hearing Tony Fabris perform Skullcrusher Mountain at a filk convention.

By the way, don't you think Coulton bears an uncanny resemblance to my friend Rand (posing with Jodi) in the photo below?



Anyway, I've been posting some of my favourite Jonathan Coulton tunes on my Blip.fm account. Plus I'll include a few here:







Less than 12 hours to go!

Suburban Travesty...on YouTube

As I mentioned before, my music group (Urban Tapestry), were the Toastmasters at a local filk convention called FilKONtario. Part of the convention is devoted to "one-shots", which are basically mini-concerts by anyone who wants to sign up, singing one song.

One of the sign-ups was a mysterious "Esty", which turns out to be "S.T.", short for Suburban Travesty. Apparently Dave Clement, Tom Jeffers and Walter had been conspiring for a while. The little sneaks.

Dave was Jodi, Tom was Allison, and Walter was me. Well...Walter carried out his threat of putting this on YouTube, and you can also find the lyrics to "Pretty FIlkers" (words by Walter! his first filk song!) at this YouTube page as well as on Flickr.

To Dave, Tom and Walter: you guys are SO doomed.

>:-)

More photos from FKO

Photo by Gary Ehrlich.

Being a guest at FilKONtario (and forgetting my camera for the first part of the convention anyway), I didn't take nearly as many photos as I usually do at a convention. Plus I didn't think there were nearly enough blackmail photos of Walter publicly available, so I went looking.

Here are a selection of photos from other people instead. Click on any photo to be taken to the source image.

Amy McNally playing fiddle during our concert (photo by Brooke):



We love having Amy play with us. She is SUCH a wonderful musician, and so generous with her accompaniment skills. Amy often holds back her true fiddle virtuosity; instead, she matches her improvisation to the song and performer she's accompanying. As a result, she doesn't often get the limelight of a solo performer. I'd love to see her as a guest at more conventions (I just noticed she's the music guest at ApolloCon in Texas!).



I love this photo of Jodi that Brooke took, while we were doing Starsoul in our concert:



Another photo by Brooke, this time of Urban Tapestry performing "A Gown Too Blue" in our literary theme filk. Brenda Sutton wrote this gorgeous song based on Doomsday Book by Connie Willis.



I loved the "nerd anthem" sung by Rand and Adam in open filk during the weekend. This needs to be sung at every filk and/or sf convention. :-D


Photo by Allison.

Below: I -loved- Eva's entry in the FKO song contest. Photo by Brooke.



Gary Ehlrich snapped this shot of Allison's, Jodi's and my reaction upon first seeing Suburban Travesty in performance:



In this photo (also by Gary), you can see Walter with his props:



Gary caught Walter on his camcorder as well:



Speaking of Walter....

Walter played a key role in our concert during our performance of "A Neurotic Love Song." During the beginning of the song, he was hiding behind the curtain and holding out pictures of people mentioned in the song. We had practised the schtick so that I'd grab a Nerf gun and shoot Luxwana and Beverly when their pictures showed:


(Photo by Gary)

...then grabbing the Nerf shotgun and shooting Eline and Vash right after:


(Photo by Gary again)

Meanwhile, I could hear Walter making frustrated noises behind the curtains as the cardboard kept catching on the curtain fabric. Heh.

When Jean-Luc / Walter appears, of course, I go all moony. As soon as he says "Earl Grey. Hot" line, I hand him a tea cup with Earl Grey (actually just a modified plastic cup with an Earl Grey tea bag). A moment later he hands me some flowers (bought at a magic shop, the kind you can hide up your sleeve) and I toss away the teacup to grab the flowers:


(Photo by Brooke)

But then he offers me his heart (we printed out a medically correct heart) and I toss away the flowers to grab the heart. Finally, Jean-Luc asks me to dance, and Gary caught the moment where I toss away the heart to grab Jean-Luc's hand:


(Photo by Gary)

Heh.

In rehearsal, we ran through the routine several times because everything happens quickly, and we knew timing was critical.


Photo by Gary.

Anyway, it turned out all right in the end, and I didn't even fall when Walter / Jean-Luc dipped me (I couldn't find a photo of this).

For those looking for more photos and reports from FKO, visit Rafe's list of convention links from FilKONtario.


Photo by Brooke.

Looking for FKO photos

Above: a spectacular screen crash on my external monitor.

A question for anyone who attended our concert at FilKONtario: if anyone has a good full-length shot of Walter in his Jean-Luc gear, I'd love to have a copy. So far I've only found two photos of Walter in his costume, taken by Phil Mills. With all the camera flashes going off during that song, I can't help but think there must be more out there.

If you've posted pics on your blog, please do post the URL. Thanks so much!

Twitter Songs

I've spent most of the past week recovering from a flu bug I picked up at FKO. Symptoms (if you caught the same, we can commiserate, eh?): overwhelming need to sleep ALL THE TIME, plus it feels as if someone has stuffed your head full of Elmer's Glue and cotton. Starting a couple of days ago, I was conscious for periods long enough to (1) post more about FKO and (2) briefly browse Blip.fm and Twitter on my iPhone from time to time. Not terribly productive, but I did find this Twitter song:



as well as discover that Ingrid Michaelson wrote a short Twitter song as well:



Finally finished unpacking from FKO yesterday afternoon! And went out to buy some fruit without collapsing along the way! Yes, I feel SO accomplished. Hoping to do some catching up with work today.