PenguiCon 4.0: The Monster Con Report

6,400 words is a new record for a con report for me.

I think people should know what being a guest at a con typically entails for me.  I’d love to have the time to write a complete report like this for all 15 cons a year I attend.  PenguiCon 4.0 was a really great con.  But I can’t call it “exceptional,” because far more often than not, my experiences at cons ARE really great.  A bad con is “exceptional.”  A great con is happily not.

For those of you who read this all the way through, I want you to understand that most cons are a lot like this for me.  These weekends are full of fun and bizarre things to do and fascinating, talented, creative, clever, thoughtful, wonderful people to do them with.  This report will have to stand in for a lot of the reports I will never write.

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Friday I arrived at DTW, got the rental car, found the hotel, checked in.  Beautiful, sunny day and a trip free of hassles.  I ran into Bill Putt (PenguiCon staff and last year's chair), who gave me two CDs with the recordings from last PenguiCon's Dementia Radio concert with Tom Smith and Luke Ski and me.  I've since listened to them, and that was a lot of fun.  I really appreciate him doing that.

The desk let me check in at about 11 am.  I had three dealings with the Holiday Inn staff and I have to say, all three were a 10 for customer service.  Perfection.  Turkey in the 10th frame.  More about this great venue in a bit.

Con prep had been a real bitch for me because I never have any time, so I ended up staying up all night on Thursday.  Fortunately, with the early check-in I was able to nap for 3 hours before anything started.  Eric Millikin of Fetus-X and I were splitting a table in the Dealers' Room, and then I had a panel at 5.

A note about the Dealers' Room before I get to Eric.  This is another thing PenguiCon did exceptionally well.  Not only were the table rates reasonable and the hours it was open perfectly sane, but periodically a staffer would come around with drinks and sandwich fixin's.  That really was a beautiful touch, and much appreciated.

Now.  Eric.

Eric's a guy whose work I have admired for as long as I have had a webcomic.  Longer, actually.  When I first had the idea to put a comic strip online, I went out and researched what was being done out there, especially in dark humor.  Fetus-X grabbed me immediately, and I read the archives and everything he and (then-partner) Casey Sorrow had written about the project.  He was artistically crazy and badass in a way I knew I couldn't ever be.  And even if I took an early poke at him before I really had the slightest fucking idea what I was talking about, I have been a fan of his for more than four years.

I remember when I did the Penguin Mom strip, Eric emailed me with the subject line, "Your comic is shit."  When I opened it up, it said "Oh sorry, I meant your comic is THE shit," and was really complimentary.  Yeah, it got me.  :D

Fetus-X commentary is integrated with the Fetus-X LiveJournal, and Eric posts a lot of weird news stories and political commentary there (colorfully calling "bullshit" on the Right, usually).  I think I described him to PenguiCon programming as "a thinking-person's radical."  I'm always throwing in my $0.02 on the Fetus-X threads.  But for all this time seeing Eric's Extreme Internet Persona (EEIP!), I had never met him in person and couldn't imagine what that might be like.

Would I be selling him out to post that he's one of the politest, sanest, most thoughtful people I have yet met in Webcomics?  Would that be betraying a terrible secret? 

Not that he isn't completely badass...I mean you should have seen his pants.  Plus he looks kind of scary, if you can imagine Sabretooth from the X-men, post eating-disorder.  When you're talking to him, he has this piercing stare that says, "You have my full attention and I am studying you on many levels."  But he's also NICE.  And KNOWLEDGEABLE.  And probably as wily as I ever suspected he was.  It was a huge pleasure to sit with him and talk shop, and a little politics (national, international, and webcomics).  I learned a lot.  I could have done that for the whole con and the trip would have been worth it.

But, of course, I had to sing for my supper.  Literally.  One thing I love about PenguiCon is that it's serious about both webcomics and filk, and so I was really doing double duty as a Nifty guest.

On Friday at 5 I had a panel called "Got Filk?"  Basically, a filk 101 panel.  Easy enough, except for who I was to be sitting with.  Tom Smith and Frank Hayes.  O_o

Tom Smith is my friend and I love that I can say that, because he is another person whose work I admired before we ever met.  He's a 10-time Pegasus winner and a Filk Hall of Famer, and I look up to him.  The thrill of being in the same filk circle with him for the first time at Arisia 2004, and having him admire "Always a Goth Chick" was something I won't forget.  Giving him a copy of my book at PenguiCon 2.0 and having him email me about it to gush was also amazing.  Now we're buddies and mutual fans and that's great, but I can't help but defer to his vast experience and ability to wow a crowd when we are on a panel or a stage together.

And Frank Hayes?  Er...he's essentially to Tom Smith what Tom Smith is to Rob Balder.  He was a giant in filk when Tom started (20+ years ago), and a living legend now.  He was PenguiCon's filk GoH (as he had been GoH at OVFF last Fall, the first time I had seen him perform).  Tom looks up to Frank the way I look up to Tom.  (Frank, for his part, waves his hand and says "pah" to all of that.  The guy has an 18 CHA and casts an area-effect Charm spell, no save.)

So in other words, in this panel, I was more or less an audience member with a very good seat.  I sat there between The Two Towers, they with their guitars and me with no crutch but a gleepy glad-to-be-here grin.  I threw in some tidbits where I had something specific to contribute (the history of recorded comedy came up and I do know something about that), and I got to do the first verse of "Narsil" to Tom's accompaniment near the end.  I had a blast.

Okay, so now we get to one of only three bad things about the trip, and the only one that was PenguiCon's fault.  Bad Thing 1: Immediately after Got Filk was the PartiallyClips panel.  For some unfathomable reason, it was scheduled for the same slot as the Schlock Mercenary panel.

This annoyed Howard Tayler and me to no end.  Not only was this making webcomics fans choose between us, but dammit, we are fans of EACH OTHER'S strip and we had to miss EACH OTHER'S panel!  WTF?

Now, Howard is not just a consummate professional but also he's a prince among men.  He told me he planned to ditch his own panel in protest and come to mine.  I counterproposed that we combine them into the same room.  But in the end, we decided that would be too confusing and whatever we did, we'd have people showing up in the wrong room and getting mad.  We went ahead as scheduled. 

Since we'd been thinking about web traffic in preparation for the big webcomics panel, we came up with the half-joking hypothesis that the ratio of total people in his crowd to total people in my crowd would mirror the ratio of our total web audience, or about 3 to 1 in Schlock's favor.  I never saw Howard's crowd but my room was surprisingly full.  Someone reported that although Schlock's crowd was bigger, it wasn't twice as big, so I apparently held my own.

The panel went well, even if I had trouble organizing my thoughts at first.  Here's what you get when you come to a Rob Balder solo PartiallyClips panel: I spill my guts.  The people in that room got an earful of details about behind the scenes work, and a description of my upcoming major projects which I have barely even hinted at in online posts.  There are big things coming, my friends.

After the panel, I returned to the dealers room.  Eric had money for me, as some of my merchandise had sold while I was away.  This was to become a recurring event.

I had brought only 4 kinds of merchandise: Rich Fantasy Lives, Get Nifty, Suffering for my Clip Art, and some buttons I had made for Katsucon that said </drama> and </lj-drama>.  I left t-shirts and the anime posters behind for space reasons.  But all items sold really well.

This is the part where I mention Bad Thing 2.  I worked my bloody ass off for about the last five weekends to get the new CD ready for this con.  I'm really proud of it; there are some laugh-your-ass-off tracks on there.  Well, I was having the first order shipped to the con, and the manufacturer, Mixonic, fucked it up.  Not only wouldn't it arrive in time, they didn't TELL me that, so I could have it shipped to Virginia instead of Michigan.  So I didn't have the CDs to sell, plus I overpaid for shipping, plus I have to pay to ship it again.  Mixonic and I are having words.

If I'd had the new CD, I am sure I would have set a record for gross sales at a con.  As it was, I came close to hitting the mark I set last year at Dragon*Con (literally 50 times the size of PenguiCon).  But for NET profit (which I am somewhat incorrectly defining as gross sales minus all meals, travel, lodging and expenses for the weekend), it was the best con I've ever had.  I want to thank everyone who bought a game, book, CD or button.  You were all very nice to chat with, and I greatly appreciate the support.

Friday night was dinner at the Irish pub attached to the hotel, with Eric and his friend Ingrid.  A bowl of Irish stew, a couple of Boddingtons drafts, and dishing the goods on the webcomics world.  Doesn't get much better than that.  Ingrid was not only hawt but also hip to the geekery - webcomics and otherwise.  Sorry you had to miss the Doctor Who panel, Ingrid.

At that point Hope, my groovy biker-chick saxophonist friend and roommate for the weekend showed up, and had with her the "Get Nifty" badge-hangers we ordered for the weekend.  These are going to be useful at many cons to come, as an incentive to buy a copy of the game.  They looked great, and had a die-cut Bunbun with a switchblade that I took directly from the cover of the game.

After dinner I ran into Bob and Tricia Crichton, some friends who were first fans (both of the strip and my filk) and are frequent con-goers.  We did a bit of the Friday night party circuit, but mostly hung out in the Green Room and the con suite, where they were making ice cream by putting half-and-half, sugar, an egg, and random ingredients shouted out by the room into a metal bowl...and then pouring in liquid nitrogen from a tank the height of a person.  I tried the "honey" flavor; it was quite good.  Tricia made Bob hold her peels while she fastidiously picked an orange clean.  And we discussed, with a transgendered contortionist who possessed a thorough knowledge of anatomy, the physiological consequences of drinking liquid nitrogen.  This led to the oft-repeated catchphrase, "Nothing left to burp with."

Note: experiences like the above paragraph are NORMAL for cons, and are precisely why I go.  Tell me you have fun like that at your fucking country club.  :Þ

On Saturday, exhaustion caught up with me and I overslept, showing up at the table about an hour after the Dealers' Room opened.  Fortunately, Eric had been on time and covered things.  At about 12:30, my brother Brett (who lives in the Detroit area) showed up.  I'd been staying with him and his wife Tracy the last two PenguiCons, but at this one I had been promoted to Nifty Guest and therefore the con offset some of my expenses and I could justify rooming at the hotel.

At 1, we assembled at the Webcomics Panel.  I had proposed a topic for this one: "Webcomics Haves and Have Nots."  It was meant to be a look at the traffic distribution among webcomics, to paint an accurate picture of just how tilted the total audience is toward the tiny sliver of top titles, how that's changing over time (it's gotten much steeper in the last year), what it means for an established comic vs. a comic that's starting now, and how it mirrors things like wealth distribution in society and the world...weighty stuff.  Howard called the topic "meaty."

Prepare for WEBCOMICS GEEKOUT.  Skip the next seven paragraphs if you don't enjoy the esoteric subject of online traffic analysis.

Schlock Mercenary and Fetus-X both have higher traffic than PartiallyClips (they each had a 2-year head start).  But we are all firmly in the "Haves."  By my best estimate, PartiallyClips is ranked in the high 40s for all titles by traffic, and I have around 180,000-200,000 readers who will check in online at least once in a 3 month span (this ignores the unknown percent of the 1.8 million readers of the papers that carry the strip).  I am installing Extreme Tracker next month, and I'm predicting it will show more than 300,000 unique visits in May 2006.  This would put PClips, Fetus-X, and Schlock Mercenary ahead of 99.8 percent of the field.

Now, joining us on the panel was The_Ferrett.  (I'm not much for noms des plumes, but that's what he goes by in private life as well as in his widely-read LiveJournal.)  His blog is in the top 50 of all 4 million LiveJournals for popularity, making him a top "Have" in the blogosphere.  His comic, Home on the Strange, however, is a mere 4 months old.  He reports 5000 unique visits on an average day.  This, by my reckoning, puts him on the "fat tail" of the power law distribution.  Read Clay Shirky's seminal article for more on power laws and traffic.

The panel was interesting but it really did not go in anything like the direction I intended.  That was fine.  Eyes glazed over when I started quoting numbers and examples (later, these got misquoted and misconstrued in Ferrett's report, which he graciously killed so he could repost after we discussed it more).  I was barely able to scratch the surface of the facts and trends I uncovered while doing research for this panel. 

In the end, I think that's probably for the best.  What's actually happening with traffic among webcomics is not good news.  The "rising tide" of increased readership is not lifting all boats, just the biggest ones.  It's not a tide, in my view, but a tsunami.  The fishing boats and pleasure craft are getting smashed and swamped, while the cruise liners and battleships are riding high. 

Although it's nice to be a cruise liner, the dim facts the numbers show are only going to make the feelings in the community grow more strident and bitter.  I believe that's what we're seeing, and why public debate in webcomics has deteriorated so badly.  I've more or less bowed out of it, and none too gracefully.

Not to get too deep into it, but the numbers I have run show that in the last 9 months, all but 6 of the top 50 webcomics have increased their traffic relative to the total traffic on the web, most of us rather dramatically.  Nobody plummeted.  But in the next hundred titles, it was a coin flip...increase or decrease was equally likely, with the chance of a plummet (usually a comic that ended, or ended updates) becoming marked.  The top 50 comics had a greater percentage of the total audience in Spring 2006 than they had in Summer 2005, despite new titles added by the thousands out on the long tail.  We are splitting more or less permanently into "elites" and "everybody else," with just a handful of late high-appeal rockets still able to launch to the stratosphere despite a late start.

The experience of being a Webcomics Have vs. a Have Not is now so radically different that we're running out of things to say to each other, and it's starting to get ugly.  I'm trying to find a way to frame it all so that creators of newly launched comics can have some realistic optimism (if that's not an oxymoron), but I can't find a simple way to say it.  When I pare it down to catchphrases, it sounds like an opinion.  It's not, really--not when there are hard figures backing it up.  It's more like a fact of life.  I don't know what to say to someone starting a webcomic right now other than "Take the long view, even a very good comic will need many years to find its audience."  I've been saying that all along, but do I now also add, "You will almost certainly never catch the top fifty comics, no matter what you do, unless we all quit," or "In the 8-12 years it will take you to reach the traffic level that the #10 comic has today, you probably will have sat in a theatre watching 'Penny Arcade, the Motion Picture'?"  Depressing.

Anyway, none of that came up on the panel, fortunately.  It annoyed me at the time that the other panelists were deviating from topic.  But on reflection, that was really good instinct on their part.  There was a lot of discussion of the numerous reasons to do a webcomic other than finding internet stardom, the many valid forms of success besides traffic.  One of these was "making money," which could be its own panel (and has been, often).  I do think the total number of webcomics creators who can make a living will keep going up over time.  I just know that the ones at the top will soon be (are, really) making obscene amounts of cash and when that all breaks, it'll make the drama we've had now look like tea with the Queen.

But I think Eric really saved the day on this score.  He is truly an artist.  He has important priorities other than to put on a show for the fans and pay for his groceries.  Fetus-X continues to evolve artistically, and I've enjoyed watching it change over time.  It has done things with the webcomic form that he doesn't get nearly enough credit for.  Growing as an artist (or writer) is one heavy consideration, a really great reason to do a webcomic that has nothing at all to do with your readership numbers.

Additionally, Fetus-X a political strip.  Eric said he's ultimately out to change minds, of course, but also considers that he has achieved something if all he does is make someone with an entrenched opinion aware that a different viewpoint exists at all.  He defines his own mission, his own success metrics.  That's a valuable concept for all creators to embrace, not just the n00bz.

So I guess the answer to "what do I say to the starting creator" is: you'd better have great reasons for doing a webcomic other than "get rich and famous" because even if you're on a path to that...it's a long path.  You'd better enjoy that hike for all it's worth.  (Good thing I do.  ^_^)

All in all, it was a great panel.  Howard is one of my favorite people to panel with, if I may verb a noun.  I really, really wish we'd had more of a chance to talk this weekend.  The_Ferrett is also a sharp guy and very nice; I enjoy his comic and his blog.  I'm glad to have him as a friend in webcomics.  I look forward to talking with him more and I hope I can help him as he develops his comic.

Whew...that was four times more about the panel than I intended to write.  Onward, or this report will never end!

After the panel, Brett and I caught the last three songs of Tom Smith's concert ("Cthulhu Lite FM," "307 Ale," and of course the quintessential closer, "Rocket Ride," last year's Pegasus winner for Best Filk Song).  Unfortunately, due to my full schedule and duties in the Dealers' Room, this was the only time I'd get to see Tom perform. 

We then split the con to do some prep for my concert at 5.  I needed to borrow Brett's boom box as a backup sound system, so we drove to his house and picked it up, said hi to my sis-in-law and dogs-in-law.  We went to the mall and bought socks, which was the other thing I failed to pack.  Disorganization is my constant companion.

I went to the room to practice, and discovered that the CD player did not like my home-burned backing CD.  Yikes.  I found Bill Putt, who was busy but dropped what he was doing to put me in touch with their sound guy and get him working on setting up a sound system for me in the concert room.

So I went out to the car and used the CD player there to rehearse, and write out my set list.  This took about an hour, and I'm glad I did it.  I had to work out how to perform some of the new songs.

One of the songs on the new CD is called "Don't Shoot," a parody of "Don't Speak" by No Doubt.  I'd been performing this for almost a year before recording it, so the recording went smoothly enough.  But then I had the inspiration to give the raw tracks to my friend ShoEboX of Worm Quartet, a comedy musician like no other.  He can boast the #1 most requested song on the Doctor Demento Show last year, and I trust him implicitly for both music and humor.  I asked him to apply some of that talent to my song, and what I got back was just completely on a different level of funny.  The song I gave him was definitely "funny the first time."  But the song I got back was an instant classic that is funny over and over and over.  I made it Track 1 on the CD.

This brings me to Bad Thing 3.  ShoEboX was scheduled to be at PenguiCon.  Last year, he had to cancel at the last minute and I was bummed.  Well, guess what?  His wife was admitted to the hospital on Friday for gallstones.  N'arrrgh!

So I had to envision a way to perform "Don't Shoot" that was simpler than the choreographed acrobatic torment-fest I had imagined.  In the end, it was more or less the same way I had been performing it, with timed pauses to direct attention to ShoEboX's voice on the speakers.

The concert got a late start, due to having to set up the sound system.  This is just fine by me...I would rather do 45 minutes of my strongest material than an hour with some of the slower ones, such as "50 Ways to Leave Your Planet," thrown in.  I was happy with the crowd size, feeling good, feeling "in voice," happy to see friendly faces.  My brother, and the Crichtons, and Carrie Dahlby and Luke Ski were all in the crowd, pleasing me to no end.  (Carrie was wearing about 30 inflated balloons.  I asked her if she'd been in a bad hallway collision and her air bags deployed.)

I opened with "Always a Goth Chick" as I do about 90 percent of the time.  I started to sing it, and...

More than half the crowd was singing along.

*blink*

Okay, I know I sold a lot of CDs at last year's PenguiCon.  27, I think.  I remember bringing 18, selling out of them, and having to burn a bunch more on someone's laptop in the LAN room.

Apparently, those CDs spent a lot of time in people's cars in the last year.  Half the room sang along to every song from the first CD.  That was...extremely good for my ego.  Thank you to everyone who attended my show.

The set went really well.  The "new" stuff was mainly new in that it finally sounded like it would on For Amusement Only.  "Don't Shoot" was so well-received it was scary.  The laughter from some of ShoEboX's lines actually drowned out some of the other jokes.  I had high hopes for "NetHack," my parody of Pepper by the Butthole Surfers, about a computer game so obscure that nobody but Old Skool computer geeks should get it.  But this is a Linux con.  NetHack is open source.  It's huge among Linux and Unix people.

Eh.  Not so much.  I don't know what to do with that song.  I'm thinking I'll put a Creative Commons license on it and send a clean copy to NetHack.org.  My way of giving something back to a game that's given me years and years of pleasure (and very much in that NetHack/Linux open-source philosophy).

So after the concert, Brett went home, and I went back to the Dealers' Room to commit more commerce.  I met more fans, including a nice woman who gave me the origami frog, swan, and spinny thing she had folded during my show.  She knew me for the filk, but she also bought my book.  Again, it was great for my ego that so many people were not only saying they enjoy my stuff, but saying it with cash.  This is the second highest compliment you can pay me.  :D

The highest compliment you can pay me is to say, "We are at this con because you're here."  I also heard THAT more than once during the weekend.  That is a really important (and pretty new) thing for me to hear, because it means the cons are justified in covering some of my expenses to bring me in.

Originally, I wasn't even planning to go to PenguiCon this year, as much as I love it.  Mike Pederson, Editor in Chief of Nth Degree and my lifelong friend, started his own convention in Richmond.  RavenCon 1 was the same weekend as PenguiCon 4.0.  When I met PenguiCon staff at PhilCon in December, I explained the conflict and told them I would probably go to RavenCon.  They asked what it would take to get me to pick them instead, and I gave them an honest answer.  They came up with what I asked for, so I went north instead of south.  But it was good to hear some indication that I was worth the incentives that PenguiCon gave me.

(Mike called me later Saturday night and told me RavenCon was a smash hit.  That made me very happy.  He also got the dates for PenguiCon 5.0 so he could book RavenCon 2 on the spot.  Next year?  No conflict.  That makes me even happier.)

When the Dealers' Room closed, Eric and I and the Crightons went looking for Howard and The_Ferrett to go get dinner.  Howard I reached by phone and he declined...he'd had all of these food-related events all weekend like the hot sauce panel and the chupaqueso thing.  But we did find The_Ferrett in the lobby.  Also there was Steve Gutterman, another former con chair (the one who proposed to his wife at opening ceremonies two years ago), who reminded me of a funny email exchange he and I had had back then.  Eric, Bob, Tricia, The_Ferrett and I then squeezed into the rental and crossed the road to Red Robin.

Wow, was our waiter at Red Robin excited to be a waiter at Red Robin.  He was like an overenthusiastic actor auditioning for the part of "the overenthusiastic waiter."  When he carefully took Bob's special order for a pot roast burger, then the kitchen ignored it, he became like a knight on a quest.  "No, this is not acceptable!"  And Brave Sir Red Robin sped off, promising Bob a "completely AWESOME" replacement pot roast burger.

Give a table full of comics creators an opening like that and we can riff on it all night.  Everything was AWESOME after that.  Indeed, the whole meal was AWESOME.  Eric couldn't restrain himself from firing a barrage of AWESOMES at the guy.  I, on the other hand, damned my pot roast platter with faint praise by saying it was "okay" when he asked.  He looked very confused in the face of my lack of alacrity.  I think maybe his throttle only toggled between "not acceptable" and "awesome."

We all had a good time there, at any rate.  On the way out, we saw that Eric's personal nemesis, "Fat Uncle Sam With A Bacon Double Cheeseburger," was present (in neon, no less) and had spotted us.  We fled, singing "Fun Fun Fun" with some misheard lyrics from my youth.

Eric was commuting, so he headed home.  I went back to the room to get some Advil and kick a little sensory-overload headache by lying down for a bit.  Hope came to the room to grab her sax-a-mo-phone, but declined a demonstration of her mad sk1llz in deference to my noggin.

After an hour of TV (every time I check in on TV, it's worse...still glad I killed mine), I felt ready to face Saturday night con parties.  I had envisioned throwing an Nth Degree style room party there but I never laid in the prep for it.  It would have been gilding the lily, as it turns out.

Now, about the venue.  At the Holiday Inn, the rooms were arranged around a central atrium which contained a swimming pool, hot tub, artificial trees, artificial putting green, a video arcade, pool tables, a ping pong table (that some wag had labeled "Live Action Pong"), a fountain court, and an open space.  All the surrounding rooms were where the con suite, green room, and open parties were held, all pretty much confined to the first three levels.

When I stepped out on the second floor, looking over the railing to the atrium, there was a drum circle in the open space next to the arcade, where they'd been having swordplay demos earlier.  Howard was among those in the circle (more like a crescent, really), banging away happily.  Hope had her saxophone and was serenading the courtyard while about 6 women in costumes were dancing to the drums, taking turns in the center of the circle they were forming.

The sound echoed all through the hotel, mellow and a little surreal.  The pool was full of happy swimmers, the hot tub with happy loungers, the fountain area with happy chatters.  The widescreen TV in The Pit was hooked up with a boxing game that pitted you against a virtual bruiser.  I gather you fought him by actually punching the air, but I never tried it.  That's where I found Bob and Tricia, though.  Bob was sweaty from his fight with the mean pixilated bully.

People were lining up along the balcony levels, drinks in hand, spilling over from the room parties, looking out into the atrium at the pool and the circle and the dancers.  Each room party had a different theme/character.  Bill Putt had open karaoke in his room.  It turned into dementia/filkaoke.

He would hunt parody lyrics online and load the real song, then put the parody lyrics on the TV over top of the regular video.  I took the opportunity to do two of the songs I had skipped in my set: "New Boy Wonder" and "50 Ways."  I tried to do a "lost Rob Balder filk" to the tune of "Eleanor Rigby," but the karaoke file was bad.  Alas, it stays lost.

The whole room went nuts with me on the mic for "Smells Like Nirvana" and I was sure the noise was going to cause the hotel to bounce the room.  We took our leave to go hunt down the Open Filk.

There was a surprising dearth of booze in the actual open parties.  I've since read in some people's con reports that there were rooms with $600 worth of alcohol and I guess I was only finding the dry ones.  Nor did I think to hit a liquor store.  Saturday night at a con is one of the only times I drink, but it's part of the party for me, so I was reduced to hitting the bar for a double Sambuca on the way to the "filk room."  On the way, I ran into my friend Leslie, Tom Smith's good friend and roadie, and had a nice little chat.  I also guessed there might be some Tully going around if it were a really traditional filk circle.

Wrong.  It wasn't even a filk circle.  It was weird.  They had a projector up, showing the lyrics to obscure computer-related filks.  People were sort of sitting and looking at the screen like in a classroom, reciting the lyrics without actually singing.  I was standing in the doorway when Luke and Carrie showed up.  We gave each other puzzled looks.  None of the other filk guests were around.  It was kind of a mystery.

I told Luke about the filkaoke in Bill's room, so we all headed up there.  Best move of the night.  Man we had a good time.  Carrie can belt out those tunes and looked sek-say in her LUKE SKI cheerleader costume.  Luke is just king of the over-the-top, on-the-fly musical comedy and the room ate him up.  He did "Don't Worry, Be Happy" as Gilbert Gottfried, with some additional personal lyrics that I'm pretty sure Bobby McFerrin and at least one previous PenguiCon guest would NOT have approved of.  It sent the room into hysterics, especially Carrie.  Somehow I kept ending up following Luke, which has to be every filker's nightmare.  Maybe one day I'll have that kind of power over a room.  I gave it my best shots, butchering the "Smokin' Pot" parody of "At the Hop" because whoever transcribed the lyrics to the net was clearly living the song and not just singing it.

Just before midnight, Bill closed the room down and we trooped down to the ballroom to do the traditional Time Warp.  I danced like a spaz to a couple good geek-rock tunes, we did the Time Warp, and headed back upstairs.

On the way back, I got waylaid by the SMOF room.  I spent some time in there, drinking their nice red wine and giving them feedback on the con, and suggestions for future guests.  I also let slip some details about my upcoming online comic projects, and they suggested maybe in 2008 they should get me and Scott McCloud as dueling webcomics Nifties.  Sounds good to me.  :D

I returned to the filkaoke party and had time to do one straight karaoke number that I really enjoy doing ("Summertime Blues," the Eddie Cochran version and not The Who's version), and then the hotel finally did bounce the room for noise.  It was 1:30 or so, and I drifted down to the Con Suite.

Bob and Tricia had crashed earlier but Bob couldn't sleep.  So he found me down there and we talked filk with some friendlies, including the knowledgeable filker Kitten, until we both finally pumpkined at 3 or so.

The next morning I packed, showered, got to the Dealers' room, and did some more hucksterage.  Eric showed up some time after noon, and I had a panel at 1, so hitting Luke and Carrie's 90 minute show at noon was out of the plan, dammit.  I decided to make a circuit of the other dealers before I packed up, and I grabbed some books and a Mother's Day present.  About halfway around the room I heard a female voice say, "Rob?"

Turns out it was the lovely and talented Andrea Dale, another filker (and technical writer) guest of the con but someone I had never met or heard before.  I had seen that she was performing but I couldn't make that show either...as you've read if you've made it this far, it was a busy weekend for me!  But we got a little bit of time to chat and trade info, which was very nice.

I said my goodbyes to Eric and thanked him for watching the table so much, and headed to my final panel.  This was "Everything You Know About Filk Is Wrong" with me and Frank Hayes.

Frank took a look at the venue and immediately rearranged things.  We moved the table off and made a circle of chairs.  The attendance was small--only about a dozen, and Luke's show was still going on loudly in the adjoining conference room.  That was my only real complaint about the venue, was sound leakage.

This was one of the coziest panels I've done.  Frank explained a lot about the different attitudes about filk, from con to con and region to region.  Many of the attendees had interesting insights to contribute, and the natural politeness of the filk circle was evident the whole time.  It was just...a pleasant talk on a topic I'm interested in.

Of course, the subject came up about those of us who use a boom box and CDs for backup, and the resistance among some filkers to that method on general principles.  My defense was that I'm doing what I do because it plays to my strengths and weaknesses.  I'm a strong humorist, a passable vocalist, and a weaksauce musician.  I could spend a lot of time trying to learn to be one more bad guitarist in the filk circle, or I could use my computer skills to build these tracks and have them there to sound like the songs I am parodying and help the effect of the parody.

It was a nice panel, and I have to say again that Frank is a terrific guy for a walking god.

After the panel I was about ready to fly.  Had to return the rental PT Cruiser and catch my flight.  I dropped in to Ops to politely remind them they owed me for site ads, and they politely cut me a check on the spot.  At least three con staffers asked me as I was leaving if I had a good time, and if I would be returning.  Yes, and yes, obviously.

At the very end, I got a real treat.  I met Andrea again and she offered to break out the guitar and sing one of her songs right then and there, on the landing outside of Ops.  I pulled up a chair and she sang "Gold, Silk & Daughters," a song about Petra and the Nabateans.  It was just beautiful.  A wonderful bookend for an incredible convention.

The trip home was mercifully unremarkable.

Thanks to all of the people mentioned above, and anyone I foolishly missed.  You give me the kind of unbuyable happiness that people write songs about.  Maybe I'll write one, too.