fithelere (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} fithelere) wrote,@ 2008-04-10 11:04:00 |
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Adventures in Canada
The Bedlam Bards are now officially international performers, as this last weekend we played in Toronto, Ontario, in an operation that has come to be known as "Bards Without Borders."
See, for sometime, Karen "Earthgirl" Paddison of Firefly Cargo Bay has been determined to get the Bedlam Bards to perform for the Toronto Browncoats. After trying various plans, she facilitated our appearance as guests at FilKONtario, a long-running filk music festival in Toronto. The convention committee made the Bards and the Browncoats very welcome, even offering a special one-day pass for BCs.
So last Thursday, Hawke, Joyce, and I boarded a plane in Austin for a very quick flight to Houston. We actually realized that if we had driven from Pine Valley Estates to the Houston Airport, we would have left at about the same time. Anyway, in Houston, we had the very shortest of layovers—to the point that we were basically running through the airport to make sure we didn't miss the flight to Toronto. Interestingly, the international flight was on a much smaller plane, but with fewer people onboard, several of us ended up with two seats to sprawl across. Another strange quality of that flight is that the climate control seemed to be aimed at getting us acclimatized to Canada; it got colder and colder as we flew. The flight attendant kept putting on more clothing. She was wearing a pea coat by the time we arrived. We, of course, were still dressed for Texas . . .
Getting through customs wasn't much of a hassle, and we were soon able to call for a shuttle to take us to the hotel. Once there, we were lucky that concom members recognized us at the front desk and were able to help us get checked in, as we weren't actually on the list to arrive that night.
As soon as we were checked in, Dave Gal, a fellow Browncoat Cruise alum, picked us up and took us to a showing of Serenity in HD on his ginormous home entertainment system. Wow! That was amazing. He was also kind enough to send out for pizza, which was good as the snack on the plane was a long time gone at that point. We also got to admire Dave's extensive sword collection and handle an actual prop from Serenity, one of Inara's hero arrows.
The next morning, Dave picked us up for a day of local sightseeing, which started at Tim Horton's, a fast-food joint featuring donuts and breakfast sandwiches. You actually can't spit in Toronto without hitting a Tim Horton's. Not that you spit.
Our next stop was the CN Tower, one of the world's tallest buildings. It's akin to the Space Needle and other towers of that type, only much taller. Unfortunately it was a cloudy day—there had actually been a bit of snow falling that morning—so visibility from the top was partly obscured by clouds, but it was still pretty awesome to look down at the city from so high up. The freakiest part is that a portion of the floor is glass. Now, we'd been told that the glass floor could hold 14 large hippos, so I knew it was perfectly safe. Even so, I involuntarily stopped short of stepping on it. (Perhaps I was wondering what had happened to that fifteenth hippo.) I did eventually make myself walk on it, staring down at the ground far below. I even took a few pictures of my feet above the clouds.
We exited through the gift shop—standard procedure for tourist attractions—and turned down the picture of us standing in front of green-screened images of Toronto on a clear day. Joyce got her requisite key-chain, and Hawke added another smashed penny to his collection. The smashed penny machine took only Canadian money, so he had to hit up Dave for the cash to do it.
We then walked a few blocks to catch the trolley car, as riding the trolley was on the list of 25 things you must do while in Toronto. I have to say that riding a bus has never struck me as a tourist attraction, but it did get us where we wanted to go. As before, Dave had to pay, as Canadian money was the only means for doing that. We hopped off the trolley on Spadina Street, which is the heart of Toronto's Chinatown. At last, we felt as though we were in a foreign country! Chinatown was picturesque, and we decided to take in some local flavor at a Chinese noodle house.
Okay, in addition to local flavor, we took in some local odors. A strong, not entirely pleasant, aroma assaulted our noses as we walked through the door. Fortunately, the smell wasn't really present at our table, though Hawke warned us that the bathroom reeked of mold.
Anyway, our hot-and-sour soup and our dumplings were all tasty enough, and no one suffered any ill effects later. When I went to pay with the Bard Card, the owner told us they didn't take credit, so we all turned to Dave to pay for our meal with that very pretty funny money they use up there. Thanks, Dave!
Next we walked down to "Kensington Market," which was actually a quaint little street (called "Kensington") lined with funky little shops that were once residences. It reminded me a lot of something you might see on South Congress in Austin, or in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Lots of used/vintage clothing, buttons with slogans like "McMurder," glass "novelty" pipes, and so on. Outside one shop, we saw something definitely Canadian: a black squirrel. All black fur. Joyce tried to get a good picture of it, but it acted like we were paparazzi.
That was our last sightseeing stop in Toronto before going back to the hotel to register for the con and do our sound checks. It was perhaps a bit odd to do sound checks the day before the performance, but the engineers wanted to get an idea of our set-up, and it did seem to help with the concert the next day. In between registration and sound checks, we caught up with Earthgirl, who was setting up the Firefly Cargo Bay booth in the dealer room. When I saw her, she gave me a gift for Vera (my truck), a car-sized version of the Independents' Flag. Very shiny. I already have a full-sized version, and Earthgirl showed me that they have two other sizes: one in between the car size and the full size, and a little stick flag size. I had to get one of the stick flags to go on my mandola. They're just too cool.
On Friday evening, we heard concerts by several great filk acts. First was a trio called Urban Tapestry. I'd never heard of them, but I was instantly impressed by their sweet harmonies, tight arrangements, and engaging personalities. Over the course of the weekend, we were surprised to learn that they were big fans of ours; in fact, they had scratched "Sail the Sky" from their set-list when they learned we were coming.
Next up on Friday night was Heather Dale, a multi-instrumentalist former SCA bardic Laurel. Her music was amazing. In particular, we were taken with a song she sang about the goddess Sedna; it was flat-out hypnotic.
After the concerts, Vixy and Tony had a CD-release party in the con suite. We stopped by to congratulate them on finishing their album, but con parties are just not my thing, so I went back downstairs to find one of the several filk circles listed on the schedule. Only one of the locations had anything going at that point, and it was just a few folks, including Bill Roper, the con's "Filk Waif" (whatever that is—he doesn't look waify), and Marilyn Miller, the con's Interfilk Guest. As the few of us there traded off, the room quickly filled; apparently the several different filk circles scheduled all ended up in one room that night. I eventually sang "The Scorpion Blues" and "Backyard Cylons," as I figured neither one would be in our Saturday concert. One of the fans there commented that the new season of BSG had started mere hours ago.
Saturday was the Browncoat day at the con. It started off with a Bedlam Bards Q&A/Autograph Session. No one asked for our autographs during the session, though we did plenty of autographing the rest of the weekend. We had several questions, and Hawke pretty much answered all of them. That's strange, because usually I'm the mouthpiece of the band.
After that, I had an hour to kill with group hypnosis. I'd never really done anything like that at a con, and I wasn't quite sure what to expect. Without a really big crowd, a hypnotist really can't count on there being enough natural somnambulists to do a conventional hypnosis show, so I made it more educational. We did a couple of exercises and some stress release. (Who can't use that?) Then to wrap it up, I invited three audience members to do arm catalepsy and woke them up while their arms were still cataleptic. I'd never done that on more than one person at a time. When I released their arms, they evidenced some discomfort, which Joyce pointed out. I did the three-count pain release, and one of the volunteers jerked her head around at me in amazement, trying to figure out where her pain had gone.
Next, we had some very shiny videos that Earthgirl had put together for us: a concert clip of me and Hawke in Albuquerque, a music video to "Mal's Song," the Mosquito parody, the extended gag reel, a slide show of "inspirational" posters using clips from Firefly and Serenity, and several videos in which Fisher-Price Little People were cast as the Big Damn Heroes. We laughed our asses off.
Then Hawke, Joyce, and I went to lunch with a bunch of the local BCs. We'd previously heard rumors of some sort of English pub, but instead for some reason we ended up at the Canadian equivalent of a Denny's. Go figure. While there, we commented on the fact that we'd been in Canada for several days, and no one had said "eh" yet.
After lunch, we had our concert in the convention's main hall. We had a little extra time during our sound check, so we "checked the mics" by singing "Whiskey in the Jar," which our audience quite enjoyed. There was little else going on during our concert, so we had most of the convention in our audience. Then, as often happens during important performances, Hawke broke a string; but for some reason, he had a particularly rough time getting it changed and getting the guitar back in tune. I filled the time by playing the funeral music from "The Message," and then by reprising "The Scorpion Blues" at the audience's request. That meant that our time was a little tight at the end of the show, so we skipped "Sail the Sky/Big Damn Trilogy" and concluded with "Freedom Costs." (At least one Toronto Browncoat is joining the 76th as a result of our performance.) Still, I think the audience liked our music. In between songs, someone in the audience asked why we weren't planning to just stay in Toronto all year, to which Dave Gal replied, "I can't afford it!"
Next up after us were Vixy and Tony. Browncoats outside of filk will know Vixy by her legal name, Michelle Dockrey, the writer of "Mal's Song." Between her amazing voice and Tony's virtuoso guitar playing, they put on an incredible show. At one point during their concert, Vixy thanked us for getting them into the Wayward Coffeehouse in Seattle. Awwww. Because they were in Canada, they did Jonathon Coulton's "All We Want to Do is Eat Your Brains" in French. They had big cards with the lyrics written out for the audience to sing along; the lovely ladies of Urban Tapestry took on the job of holding them up at appropriate times. Then after the song, Michelle continued monologuing in French, while the signs informed us that the day before had been Tony's birthday, and we should all sing "Happy Birthday" at the count of three. Talk about blindsiding.
After the concerts broke up, I wandered over to the dealers' room and discovered there was an instrument maker set up. He handed me an awesome 10-string cittern in open tuning. Oh, don't throw me in that brier patch! He and I had a really great jam session, and then Heather Dale joined in. We were having a blast, but it was time to close the dealers' room. I asked the instrument maker if he'd be sticking around for the evening filk circles and could I borrow the cittern for the night, but he said he was packing up to go . . .
Dejected, I sought out the Browncoats, who were having a laid-back pizza party in one of the side rooms. (The rest of the con was doing a fancy banquet.) Earthgirl had some of those things like you see at faire, where there's a picture of some fanciful figure with the face cut out for people to pose in for photographs. (Those things must have a name, right? Beats me if I know what it is.) Only hers were Whedon-themed: One had the Fruity Oaty Bar girls, and the other had the Grrr Arrrgh monster. After we were all stuffed full of pizza, Karen asked if anyone was up for the Firefly-inspired games she had planned for the night, but one of my hypnosis volunteers from earlier in the day piped up, "Let's have Cedric hypnotize us again!"
Yeah, sure, I can just make something up on the spot, no problem. So before I knew it, I had the whole room closing their eyes, breathing deep, and experiencing a ride on Serenity, complete with climate-control malfunctions and tasty strawberries. I wrapped it up with a chance to absorb the better qualities of any of the characters into oneself. Folks seemed to really enjoy the chance to ride on Serenity.
Then Hawke and I gave a little mini-concert for the Browncoats present, on account of our earlier show being shorter than we're used to. We wrapped up fairly quickly and encouraged folks to go to the Interfilk auction, which raises money for an organization that sponsors kind of a regional filker exchange program. Vixy had donated a very shiny Kaylee parasol, which Dave Gal bought.
The final activity of the night was two separate filk circles, one reputedly more of an Irish session, at least in that there were a couple of professional Celtic musicians there being overly serious about Celtic music. They were good players, but they reminded me a bit of why I don't go to the Austin session. Still, we had some good jams before I wandered over to the smaller circle, which was a more typical filk session.
When I walked into that room, someone asked me if the other session had broken up, and I wondered why until I looked behind me and saw that about a dozen people had followed, including the members of Urban Tapestry, who sat literally at my feet when I found a chair. I joined in with fiddle harmonies on one of their songs—which was easy to do on account of how sweet their sound was already—and then I asked if they'd join me for "Sail the Sky." I just wish Hawke had been there, because that was a very cool collaboration. When we got to the instrumental break, I asked Debbie to take it on flute; their harmonies on the chorus really made it special. What a nifty moment. Afterwards, they informed me that I had to stay in Toronto, and they were starting a rumor to that effect. Funny, but I did hear that rumor several more times that weekend.
On Sunday morning, I got a call from Laura Crandall, a Buffalo, NY, Browncoat I had expected to see at the concert on Saturday. She told me that she got the days mixed up, and she and a friend were sitting in the lobby. So we went down and had breakfast with them. We'd met Laura at the Browncoat Backup Bash; she was one of the kind Browncoats who offered us a spare bed in her hotel room when we had no place to stay. Anyway, she and her friend were quite disappointed to have missed our concert, so we invited them and Dave Gal up to our room for a private concert. It was the least we could do, especially since she'd brought us Jayne hats! After a couple of songs, I curled up on my bed and slept while Hawke continued to sing. I like staying up late at those filk circles, but I really do need my beauty rest . . .
We eventually moseyed down to the main programming room and caught part of the children's concert, which had only one child attending, but lots of adults. We also spent a while wandering around trying to swap CDs with other musicians, and posing for spontaneous photo ops. When dinner rolled around, we invaded a local restaurant with our crew, only to discover that several other tables were filled with conventioneers. We picked up Dave's check, which he later commented seemed to even out the score. J
That evening, even though the con was officially over, there was a very large filk circle at the "Dead Penguin Party." (What is it with fans and penguins? That's the second con I've been to that has the penguin as its unofficial mascot.) I like to play along with what I hear, so I sat there picking on my mandola through most of the performances. That led someone to think that I was trying to get a chance to do a song, so they called on me to perform. Most of the songs had been pretty sedate, but I really didn't want to do sedate, so I sang "The Sparrow Song" instead. When I finished, there was kind of a lull, and someone close to me whispered, "No one wants to follow you, Cedric." Gorramit, I didn't even stand up to sing . . .
Eventually the wheel started turning again. There were some really great performances that night. Kathleen from Colorado asked me to play country fiddle on an Austin Lounge Lizards song; thank god she had a chord chart, because the song was in E-Major. I would have done much better in D. It made me think that I really ought to learn ALL's stupid Texas song. That would be a fun one to take to other places. Before I left, I played some gypsy fiddle, just to show off my range. *grin*
Well, despite what a great filk circle it was, I retired before the night got too late, as I knew we had a big day ahead of us on Monday. Dave Gal, our faithful tour guide and handler, met us at the A&W for breakfast at ten and then drove us down to Niagara Falls. I slept through quite a bit of the drive, but I don't think I missed a lot. A Canadian freeway looks a lot like an American freeway, once you've gotten used to seeing speed limits of 100 (kilometers, that is) and road signs in English and French. (You'd think that as long as the French-speaking population of Canada has been in the New World, they'd have learned to speak Spanish by now.)
Our first stop in Niagara was the Butterfly Observatory, which Earthgirl had recommended to us. I wasn't sure what we'd see in April, which is like a Texas January, but we wanted to check it out anyway. Well, once we were in there, it was amazing. It's a densely packed greenhouse full of tropical plants and waterfall; we started peeling off layers of clothing as soon as we got there. Just the plants and landscaping were really cool, but then you have to add the butterflies. There were literally everywhere, resting on branches, leaves, railings, and feeding platforms; zipping through the air playing tag; pushing one another off the choice flowers . . . butterflies in every color, from the huge blue ones that showed only brown when they landed to tiny tiger-striped beauties, and everything in between. Butterflies landed on three out of four of us, and we all had the experience of them flying right in front of our faces. At one end of the observatory was the cocoon area, where we could watch butterflies emerging and drying their wings. The whole place was magical.
The next stop was the Horseshoe Falls. As we drove towards them, suddenly my vocabulary was reduced to Keanu Reeves level: "Whoah. Dude. Dude! Look at that. Dude! Whoah . . . " Dave paid for us to park (Thanks, Dave!) and we all walked over to the Falls themselves. It's really an amazing sight. The water is green as it goes over the Falls, except that so much of it is spray that you can't even see where it hits. We could watch chunks of ice come down the river and over the Falls. As we got closer, we started adding more and more layer of clothing. Finally, standing where we had the most expansive view of the water, we had the experience of the wind blowing directly toward us. It was so strong and cold that it literally took our breath away, and so wet with spray that we said it was raining sideways. Words really can't describe what it's like to see the Falls.
Eventually we decided to go into the building, and the first part we encountered was the gift shop. Alas, there were no smoosh-faced lions, and the clerks were friendly and helpful, even when I asked them to honor a retroactive coupon. We picked up a few tourist items before heading over to the "Journey Beneath the Falls" ticket booth, which sported a big sign that read, "This is NOT the Maid of the Mists Boat Tour!" We'd been told that the Maid of the Mists Boat Tour (based on that totally fabricated "Native American" legend) is the quintessential Niagara experience, but alas, April was still too wintery for it to be running. In fact, we got a "winter discount" on the Journey Beneath the Falls because the lower observation deck was closed. Even so, it was really cool. After you pose for the obligatory green screen shot (sigh), an elevator takes you down into the earth, where you can walk through tunnels that open up literally under Horseshoe Falls. It's amazing. One of the openings was nothing but packed snow and ice, but the others had rushing water. Very shiny.
On our way back up the elevator, Hawke asked the elevator operator a question about a local historical event, and the answer included the defining Canadian experience I'd been missing the entire time: He said "eh"! Afterwards, I pointed it out, and Dave said he didn't even notice. Apparently it just slips by the Canadian ear, eh?
Well, all this rushing water had made us have to pee, so we hit the restrooms (or "washrooms" as our neighbors to the Nord call them). Why is this worth mentioning? Because the men's room in the Horseshoe Falls Visitor Center had foot washing stations. Foot washing stations, no kidding. If it hadn't been for the signs, I would have thought they were oddly shaped urinals. We have no idea what local activity (unique to males, apparently) necessitates foot washing in the washroom.
The sightseeing had given us a hearty appetite, so we went once more to Tim Horton's, where I discovered that a combo comes not with fries, but with a donut. That was a shocker, eh?
We considered the possibility of riding the aerocar over the great whirlpool, but by that point, we'd had plenty of tourism, so Dave drove us around colorful Niagara, including going past the water several times, just because it's so cool to look at. On our way out, we past entire streets that were nothing but B&B's, not to mention the giant "Wildflower Clock," which was totally brown at that point, and a wildflower sign reading "Niagara Falls Horticultural Gardens," which was also completely brown. There's just something ironic about that; it reminded me of how the audience had growled when I mentioned that we already had wildflowers blooming in Texas.
Having nothing planned for that evening, Dave took us back to his home theater for a screening of Unforgiven. It had been years since I'd seen that movie, but it holds up.
Too soon, Tuesday rolled around, and we had to bid farewell to Canada. It was certainly a wonderful experience getting to visit Toronto, meet lots of fun people for the first time, be reunited with many of our Browncoat friends, and enjoy lots of great music. We're truly lucky that people like Karen Paddison from Firefly Cargo Bay, the concom of FilKONtario, and our friend Dave Gal were willing to make this trip possible for us.
The Bedlam Bards are now officially international performers, as this last weekend we played in Toronto, Ontario, in an operation that has come to be known as "Bards Without Borders."
See, for sometime, Karen "Earthgirl" Paddison of Firefly Cargo Bay has been determined to get the Bedlam Bards to perform for the Toronto Browncoats. After trying various plans, she facilitated our appearance as guests at FilKONtario, a long-running filk music festival in Toronto. The convention committee made the Bards and the Browncoats very welcome, even offering a special one-day pass for BCs.
So last Thursday, Hawke, Joyce, and I boarded a plane in Austin for a very quick flight to Houston. We actually realized that if we had driven from Pine Valley Estates to the Houston Airport, we would have left at about the same time. Anyway, in Houston, we had the very shortest of layovers—to the point that we were basically running through the airport to make sure we didn't miss the flight to Toronto. Interestingly, the international flight was on a much smaller plane, but with fewer people onboard, several of us ended up with two seats to sprawl across. Another strange quality of that flight is that the climate control seemed to be aimed at getting us acclimatized to Canada; it got colder and colder as we flew. The flight attendant kept putting on more clothing. She was wearing a pea coat by the time we arrived. We, of course, were still dressed for Texas . . .
Getting through customs wasn't much of a hassle, and we were soon able to call for a shuttle to take us to the hotel. Once there, we were lucky that concom members recognized us at the front desk and were able to help us get checked in, as we weren't actually on the list to arrive that night.
As soon as we were checked in, Dave Gal, a fellow Browncoat Cruise alum, picked us up and took us to a showing of Serenity in HD on his ginormous home entertainment system. Wow! That was amazing. He was also kind enough to send out for pizza, which was good as the snack on the plane was a long time gone at that point. We also got to admire Dave's extensive sword collection and handle an actual prop from Serenity, one of Inara's hero arrows.
The next morning, Dave picked us up for a day of local sightseeing, which started at Tim Horton's, a fast-food joint featuring donuts and breakfast sandwiches. You actually can't spit in Toronto without hitting a Tim Horton's. Not that you spit.
Our next stop was the CN Tower, one of the world's tallest buildings. It's akin to the Space Needle and other towers of that type, only much taller. Unfortunately it was a cloudy day—there had actually been a bit of snow falling that morning—so visibility from the top was partly obscured by clouds, but it was still pretty awesome to look down at the city from so high up. The freakiest part is that a portion of the floor is glass. Now, we'd been told that the glass floor could hold 14 large hippos, so I knew it was perfectly safe. Even so, I involuntarily stopped short of stepping on it. (Perhaps I was wondering what had happened to that fifteenth hippo.) I did eventually make myself walk on it, staring down at the ground far below. I even took a few pictures of my feet above the clouds.
We exited through the gift shop—standard procedure for tourist attractions—and turned down the picture of us standing in front of green-screened images of Toronto on a clear day. Joyce got her requisite key-chain, and Hawke added another smashed penny to his collection. The smashed penny machine took only Canadian money, so he had to hit up Dave for the cash to do it.
We then walked a few blocks to catch the trolley car, as riding the trolley was on the list of 25 things you must do while in Toronto. I have to say that riding a bus has never struck me as a tourist attraction, but it did get us where we wanted to go. As before, Dave had to pay, as Canadian money was the only means for doing that. We hopped off the trolley on Spadina Street, which is the heart of Toronto's Chinatown. At last, we felt as though we were in a foreign country! Chinatown was picturesque, and we decided to take in some local flavor at a Chinese noodle house.
Okay, in addition to local flavor, we took in some local odors. A strong, not entirely pleasant, aroma assaulted our noses as we walked through the door. Fortunately, the smell wasn't really present at our table, though Hawke warned us that the bathroom reeked of mold.
Anyway, our hot-and-sour soup and our dumplings were all tasty enough, and no one suffered any ill effects later. When I went to pay with the Bard Card, the owner told us they didn't take credit, so we all turned to Dave to pay for our meal with that very pretty funny money they use up there. Thanks, Dave!
Next we walked down to "Kensington Market," which was actually a quaint little street (called "Kensington") lined with funky little shops that were once residences. It reminded me a lot of something you might see on South Congress in Austin, or in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Lots of used/vintage clothing, buttons with slogans like "McMurder," glass "novelty" pipes, and so on. Outside one shop, we saw something definitely Canadian: a black squirrel. All black fur. Joyce tried to get a good picture of it, but it acted like we were paparazzi.
That was our last sightseeing stop in Toronto before going back to the hotel to register for the con and do our sound checks. It was perhaps a bit odd to do sound checks the day before the performance, but the engineers wanted to get an idea of our set-up, and it did seem to help with the concert the next day. In between registration and sound checks, we caught up with Earthgirl, who was setting up the Firefly Cargo Bay booth in the dealer room. When I saw her, she gave me a gift for Vera (my truck), a car-sized version of the Independents' Flag. Very shiny. I already have a full-sized version, and Earthgirl showed me that they have two other sizes: one in between the car size and the full size, and a little stick flag size. I had to get one of the stick flags to go on my mandola. They're just too cool.
On Friday evening, we heard concerts by several great filk acts. First was a trio called Urban Tapestry. I'd never heard of them, but I was instantly impressed by their sweet harmonies, tight arrangements, and engaging personalities. Over the course of the weekend, we were surprised to learn that they were big fans of ours; in fact, they had scratched "Sail the Sky" from their set-list when they learned we were coming.
Next up on Friday night was Heather Dale, a multi-instrumentalist former SCA bardic Laurel. Her music was amazing. In particular, we were taken with a song she sang about the goddess Sedna; it was flat-out hypnotic.
After the concerts, Vixy and Tony had a CD-release party in the con suite. We stopped by to congratulate them on finishing their album, but con parties are just not my thing, so I went back downstairs to find one of the several filk circles listed on the schedule. Only one of the locations had anything going at that point, and it was just a few folks, including Bill Roper, the con's "Filk Waif" (whatever that is—he doesn't look waify), and Marilyn Miller, the con's Interfilk Guest. As the few of us there traded off, the room quickly filled; apparently the several different filk circles scheduled all ended up in one room that night. I eventually sang "The Scorpion Blues" and "Backyard Cylons," as I figured neither one would be in our Saturday concert. One of the fans there commented that the new season of BSG had started mere hours ago.
Saturday was the Browncoat day at the con. It started off with a Bedlam Bards Q&A/Autograph Session. No one asked for our autographs during the session, though we did plenty of autographing the rest of the weekend. We had several questions, and Hawke pretty much answered all of them. That's strange, because usually I'm the mouthpiece of the band.
After that, I had an hour to kill with group hypnosis. I'd never really done anything like that at a con, and I wasn't quite sure what to expect. Without a really big crowd, a hypnotist really can't count on there being enough natural somnambulists to do a conventional hypnosis show, so I made it more educational. We did a couple of exercises and some stress release. (Who can't use that?) Then to wrap it up, I invited three audience members to do arm catalepsy and woke them up while their arms were still cataleptic. I'd never done that on more than one person at a time. When I released their arms, they evidenced some discomfort, which Joyce pointed out. I did the three-count pain release, and one of the volunteers jerked her head around at me in amazement, trying to figure out where her pain had gone.
Next, we had some very shiny videos that Earthgirl had put together for us: a concert clip of me and Hawke in Albuquerque, a music video to "Mal's Song," the Mosquito parody, the extended gag reel, a slide show of "inspirational" posters using clips from Firefly and Serenity, and several videos in which Fisher-Price Little People were cast as the Big Damn Heroes. We laughed our asses off.
Then Hawke, Joyce, and I went to lunch with a bunch of the local BCs. We'd previously heard rumors of some sort of English pub, but instead for some reason we ended up at the Canadian equivalent of a Denny's. Go figure. While there, we commented on the fact that we'd been in Canada for several days, and no one had said "eh" yet.
After lunch, we had our concert in the convention's main hall. We had a little extra time during our sound check, so we "checked the mics" by singing "Whiskey in the Jar," which our audience quite enjoyed. There was little else going on during our concert, so we had most of the convention in our audience. Then, as often happens during important performances, Hawke broke a string; but for some reason, he had a particularly rough time getting it changed and getting the guitar back in tune. I filled the time by playing the funeral music from "The Message," and then by reprising "The Scorpion Blues" at the audience's request. That meant that our time was a little tight at the end of the show, so we skipped "Sail the Sky/Big Damn Trilogy" and concluded with "Freedom Costs." (At least one Toronto Browncoat is joining the 76th as a result of our performance.) Still, I think the audience liked our music. In between songs, someone in the audience asked why we weren't planning to just stay in Toronto all year, to which Dave Gal replied, "I can't afford it!"
Next up after us were Vixy and Tony. Browncoats outside of filk will know Vixy by her legal name, Michelle Dockrey, the writer of "Mal's Song." Between her amazing voice and Tony's virtuoso guitar playing, they put on an incredible show. At one point during their concert, Vixy thanked us for getting them into the Wayward Coffeehouse in Seattle. Awwww. Because they were in Canada, they did Jonathon Coulton's "All We Want to Do is Eat Your Brains" in French. They had big cards with the lyrics written out for the audience to sing along; the lovely ladies of Urban Tapestry took on the job of holding them up at appropriate times. Then after the song, Michelle continued monologuing in French, while the signs informed us that the day before had been Tony's birthday, and we should all sing "Happy Birthday" at the count of three. Talk about blindsiding.
After the concerts broke up, I wandered over to the dealers' room and discovered there was an instrument maker set up. He handed me an awesome 10-string cittern in open tuning. Oh, don't throw me in that brier patch! He and I had a really great jam session, and then Heather Dale joined in. We were having a blast, but it was time to close the dealers' room. I asked the instrument maker if he'd be sticking around for the evening filk circles and could I borrow the cittern for the night, but he said he was packing up to go . . .
Dejected, I sought out the Browncoats, who were having a laid-back pizza party in one of the side rooms. (The rest of the con was doing a fancy banquet.) Earthgirl had some of those things like you see at faire, where there's a picture of some fanciful figure with the face cut out for people to pose in for photographs. (Those things must have a name, right? Beats me if I know what it is.) Only hers were Whedon-themed: One had the Fruity Oaty Bar girls, and the other had the Grrr Arrrgh monster. After we were all stuffed full of pizza, Karen asked if anyone was up for the Firefly-inspired games she had planned for the night, but one of my hypnosis volunteers from earlier in the day piped up, "Let's have Cedric hypnotize us again!"
Yeah, sure, I can just make something up on the spot, no problem. So before I knew it, I had the whole room closing their eyes, breathing deep, and experiencing a ride on Serenity, complete with climate-control malfunctions and tasty strawberries. I wrapped it up with a chance to absorb the better qualities of any of the characters into oneself. Folks seemed to really enjoy the chance to ride on Serenity.
Then Hawke and I gave a little mini-concert for the Browncoats present, on account of our earlier show being shorter than we're used to. We wrapped up fairly quickly and encouraged folks to go to the Interfilk auction, which raises money for an organization that sponsors kind of a regional filker exchange program. Vixy had donated a very shiny Kaylee parasol, which Dave Gal bought.
The final activity of the night was two separate filk circles, one reputedly more of an Irish session, at least in that there were a couple of professional Celtic musicians there being overly serious about Celtic music. They were good players, but they reminded me a bit of why I don't go to the Austin session. Still, we had some good jams before I wandered over to the smaller circle, which was a more typical filk session.
When I walked into that room, someone asked me if the other session had broken up, and I wondered why until I looked behind me and saw that about a dozen people had followed, including the members of Urban Tapestry, who sat literally at my feet when I found a chair. I joined in with fiddle harmonies on one of their songs—which was easy to do on account of how sweet their sound was already—and then I asked if they'd join me for "Sail the Sky." I just wish Hawke had been there, because that was a very cool collaboration. When we got to the instrumental break, I asked Debbie to take it on flute; their harmonies on the chorus really made it special. What a nifty moment. Afterwards, they informed me that I had to stay in Toronto, and they were starting a rumor to that effect. Funny, but I did hear that rumor several more times that weekend.
On Sunday morning, I got a call from Laura Crandall, a Buffalo, NY, Browncoat I had expected to see at the concert on Saturday. She told me that she got the days mixed up, and she and a friend were sitting in the lobby. So we went down and had breakfast with them. We'd met Laura at the Browncoat Backup Bash; she was one of the kind Browncoats who offered us a spare bed in her hotel room when we had no place to stay. Anyway, she and her friend were quite disappointed to have missed our concert, so we invited them and Dave Gal up to our room for a private concert. It was the least we could do, especially since she'd brought us Jayne hats! After a couple of songs, I curled up on my bed and slept while Hawke continued to sing. I like staying up late at those filk circles, but I really do need my beauty rest . . .
We eventually moseyed down to the main programming room and caught part of the children's concert, which had only one child attending, but lots of adults. We also spent a while wandering around trying to swap CDs with other musicians, and posing for spontaneous photo ops. When dinner rolled around, we invaded a local restaurant with our crew, only to discover that several other tables were filled with conventioneers. We picked up Dave's check, which he later commented seemed to even out the score. J
That evening, even though the con was officially over, there was a very large filk circle at the "Dead Penguin Party." (What is it with fans and penguins? That's the second con I've been to that has the penguin as its unofficial mascot.) I like to play along with what I hear, so I sat there picking on my mandola through most of the performances. That led someone to think that I was trying to get a chance to do a song, so they called on me to perform. Most of the songs had been pretty sedate, but I really didn't want to do sedate, so I sang "The Sparrow Song" instead. When I finished, there was kind of a lull, and someone close to me whispered, "No one wants to follow you, Cedric." Gorramit, I didn't even stand up to sing . . .
Eventually the wheel started turning again. There were some really great performances that night. Kathleen from Colorado asked me to play country fiddle on an Austin Lounge Lizards song; thank god she had a chord chart, because the song was in E-Major. I would have done much better in D. It made me think that I really ought to learn ALL's stupid Texas song. That would be a fun one to take to other places. Before I left, I played some gypsy fiddle, just to show off my range. *grin*
Well, despite what a great filk circle it was, I retired before the night got too late, as I knew we had a big day ahead of us on Monday. Dave Gal, our faithful tour guide and handler, met us at the A&W for breakfast at ten and then drove us down to Niagara Falls. I slept through quite a bit of the drive, but I don't think I missed a lot. A Canadian freeway looks a lot like an American freeway, once you've gotten used to seeing speed limits of 100 (kilometers, that is) and road signs in English and French. (You'd think that as long as the French-speaking population of Canada has been in the New World, they'd have learned to speak Spanish by now.)
Our first stop in Niagara was the Butterfly Observatory, which Earthgirl had recommended to us. I wasn't sure what we'd see in April, which is like a Texas January, but we wanted to check it out anyway. Well, once we were in there, it was amazing. It's a densely packed greenhouse full of tropical plants and waterfall; we started peeling off layers of clothing as soon as we got there. Just the plants and landscaping were really cool, but then you have to add the butterflies. There were literally everywhere, resting on branches, leaves, railings, and feeding platforms; zipping through the air playing tag; pushing one another off the choice flowers . . . butterflies in every color, from the huge blue ones that showed only brown when they landed to tiny tiger-striped beauties, and everything in between. Butterflies landed on three out of four of us, and we all had the experience of them flying right in front of our faces. At one end of the observatory was the cocoon area, where we could watch butterflies emerging and drying their wings. The whole place was magical.
The next stop was the Horseshoe Falls. As we drove towards them, suddenly my vocabulary was reduced to Keanu Reeves level: "Whoah. Dude. Dude! Look at that. Dude! Whoah . . . " Dave paid for us to park (Thanks, Dave!) and we all walked over to the Falls themselves. It's really an amazing sight. The water is green as it goes over the Falls, except that so much of it is spray that you can't even see where it hits. We could watch chunks of ice come down the river and over the Falls. As we got closer, we started adding more and more layer of clothing. Finally, standing where we had the most expansive view of the water, we had the experience of the wind blowing directly toward us. It was so strong and cold that it literally took our breath away, and so wet with spray that we said it was raining sideways. Words really can't describe what it's like to see the Falls.
Eventually we decided to go into the building, and the first part we encountered was the gift shop. Alas, there were no smoosh-faced lions, and the clerks were friendly and helpful, even when I asked them to honor a retroactive coupon. We picked up a few tourist items before heading over to the "Journey Beneath the Falls" ticket booth, which sported a big sign that read, "This is NOT the Maid of the Mists Boat Tour!" We'd been told that the Maid of the Mists Boat Tour (based on that totally fabricated "Native American" legend) is the quintessential Niagara experience, but alas, April was still too wintery for it to be running. In fact, we got a "winter discount" on the Journey Beneath the Falls because the lower observation deck was closed. Even so, it was really cool. After you pose for the obligatory green screen shot (sigh), an elevator takes you down into the earth, where you can walk through tunnels that open up literally under Horseshoe Falls. It's amazing. One of the openings was nothing but packed snow and ice, but the others had rushing water. Very shiny.
On our way back up the elevator, Hawke asked the elevator operator a question about a local historical event, and the answer included the defining Canadian experience I'd been missing the entire time: He said "eh"! Afterwards, I pointed it out, and Dave said he didn't even notice. Apparently it just slips by the Canadian ear, eh?
Well, all this rushing water had made us have to pee, so we hit the restrooms (or "washrooms" as our neighbors to the Nord call them). Why is this worth mentioning? Because the men's room in the Horseshoe Falls Visitor Center had foot washing stations. Foot washing stations, no kidding. If it hadn't been for the signs, I would have thought they were oddly shaped urinals. We have no idea what local activity (unique to males, apparently) necessitates foot washing in the washroom.
The sightseeing had given us a hearty appetite, so we went once more to Tim Horton's, where I discovered that a combo comes not with fries, but with a donut. That was a shocker, eh?
We considered the possibility of riding the aerocar over the great whirlpool, but by that point, we'd had plenty of tourism, so Dave drove us around colorful Niagara, including going past the water several times, just because it's so cool to look at. On our way out, we past entire streets that were nothing but B&B's, not to mention the giant "Wildflower Clock," which was totally brown at that point, and a wildflower sign reading "Niagara Falls Horticultural Gardens," which was also completely brown. There's just something ironic about that; it reminded me of how the audience had growled when I mentioned that we already had wildflowers blooming in Texas.
Having nothing planned for that evening, Dave took us back to his home theater for a screening of Unforgiven. It had been years since I'd seen that movie, but it holds up.
Too soon, Tuesday rolled around, and we had to bid farewell to Canada. It was certainly a wonderful experience getting to visit Toronto, meet lots of fun people for the first time, be reunited with many of our Browncoat friends, and enjoy lots of great music. We're truly lucky that people like Karen Paddison from Firefly Cargo Bay, the concom of FilKONtario, and our friend Dave Gal were willing to make this trip possible for us.
