And another year begins. The weather was pleasant enough for us to ring in the new year at First Night Alexandria, joined by Mark Silverdragon (WINOLJ) and his wife Barbara. I suggested Daniel O'Connell's Restaurant and Bar for dinner since previous experience has suggested it's one of the more reliably decent places cuisine-wise on (or near) King ( Read more... )

Contata pictures here. Not the best of lighting conditions as the levels were low and no flash used due to light-sensitive members of the con. But still some decent shots in there.

So yesterday, I said Contata was mucho fun. This was not an entirely accurate description. In fact, Contata was a giant chocolate cupcake of awesomeness topped with icing made of pure sugary win.

( A skyscraper's worth of highlights )

So one can be astoundingly lazy and watch A Capitol Fourth from the comforts of one's own home instead of braving even the just-down-the-street local July 4th festivities.

In other news, Contata was mucho fun.

This past Wednesday's Washington Post ran an entertaining article on how sign-language interpreters translate Lady Gaga, Bon Jovi and other rockers and pop stars. You think interpreting filkertom or seanan_mcguire is hard? Try dealing with such exquisite lyrics as "Come on now, this beat is sick. I wanna take a ride on your disco stick" (Gaga) or "There's only pictures ( Read more... )

More Contata brain dumps...

-- Would any of my readers be offended if we get rid of Delaware? The drive up took about 4 hours and 45 minutes. A good portion of those additional 45 minutes were spent in Delaware, I believe. This is largely why we got to the con just in time for starmalachite's Filk Classics concert, in which I rocked my way through Frank Hayes ( Read more... )

While I still have a few functioning brain cells...

I had a great time at Contata! I'm told they had about 100 folks registered not including kids or guests, which is excellent. I was much in demand as a Trained Stunt Guitarist, accompanying signy1 on "Rich Fantasy Lives" in the Tom Smith benefit, partiallyclips on "Uplift" and suecochran on "God Lives On Terra" in the one- ( Read more... )