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myrialux and I spent this weekend down in the Texas Hill Country at my cousin's wedding. We weren't sure until the last minute if we'd come because

myrialux was getting over a pretty bad cold* and I had no idea if I was going to come down with it.**

This was a large wedding - approximately 200-250 people; I didn't do an official count - most of which I'd never met and had no idea who they were because I don't know the groom's family or most of my cousin's maternal relatives. It was actually a good way for

myrialux to meet my relatives as nobody had any time to grill him for longer than a minute or two.

I'd mentioned to

myrialux before that when that side of my family gets together, they sing and play guitar, mandolin, fiddle, etc. He hadn't really grokked what that meant, and spent the entire weekend in a daze of "There are people like this WHO ACTUALLY EXIST!" and comparing them to the Partridge Family.***

The style of music they sing (and write!) is what I'd describe as old-time acoustic country and folk, with a bit of bluegrass thrown in. You've seen O Brother, Where Art Thou? Similar to that. And they can sing. In tune. Also, they are all ~~Weasleys~~ tall, redheaded, good-looking, and nice so yes, it is rather intimidating to hang out with my family when you're not. :)

And after we drove back, stopping in Austin to have lunch with friends, we went to check on the apartment of a couple we know who are out of town for a few weeks and discovered that the power was off and had been so long enough that the fridge was ... interesting. Tonight's entertainment is to go back with a couple of stout garbage bags and clean it out, then turn it off and leave the doors open to air out. If the power is still off,***** we're doing it in the dark.

--
* As he had no fever, probably not the flu, but You Never Know.

** Apparently not. Which is a welcome change.

*** I wouldn't go quite that far, but: in this world there seem to be people who consume music, and people who produce music. The vast majority of my friends consume it, and the vast majority of my family produces it. Which is why I'm weirded out by the hate for filkers in my circles of the SF fan community. I do understand hating the attack bards who show up at your room parties and sing at you without first establishing that you'd like to be sung at**** and I reserve the right to throw out anyone who does that, but the hatred for filkers is way out of proportion among my friends.

**** Really. In the middle of a conversation about the guests you're having next year at your con, they break into a filk they've written and you're forced to sit there politely and listen to the entire thing because you'd like them to buy a membership and attend. Guys! Ask first!

***** Our friends know about this, and it was supposed to have been taken care of last week, but due to some stupidity on the part of Oncor, who put "No access" on the ticket******, it wasn't turned back on.

****** It's an apartment. You gain access by going to the office and asking for access. This is not a difficult concept!

*******Orphaned footnote!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I haven't run into any attack bards; all of the filkers I know are polite, friendly, keep their music to their concerts and open filk, and the rudest thing people typically do is to be bad at giving other people a turn at performing.

Although I admit to singing in the bathroom because we didn't have better rehearsal space at a con once, but there wasn't anyone in there when we started. Not sure if we kept anyone from coming in and disturbing us though, but we did have a few people drift in and out while we were there. (We weren't there long either -- the bathroom kept attacking us with air freshener.)

It's only happened a couple of times at cons, but I got hit a number of times when I was in the SCA, which soured me on anyone showing up and singing unnannounced. XD But it's always the few bad apples that sour the bunch.

I am often puzzled by our fellow con officers' contempt for filkers as well. Many of the filkers are reasonably talented folk, and some of them are semi-professional musicians (I mean, up until the last year or so, Jonathan Coulton could be arguably called a filker, as he was making silly parody songs for no reason other than to do so and be creative). I can only chalk it up to the fact that a) filkers are a niche hobby and those that aren't filkers aren't interested, but filkers always insist that there's enough of them to require space in the con programming, and b) those con officers that I know have openly negative and mocking opinions of filk are snarky, cynical folk anyways, and their comments about filk are no different from their comments about any other niche group of the fandom.

Wait, wait, this is anime fandom? Who lets Vic whateverhislastname is conduct prayer services at cons? I mean, I have no problem with this if everyone's cool with it but...flikkers are not acceptable in this environment? What?

We're officers at an SF lit con, which is the one he's talking about. :)

I FEEL SO MUCH BETTER NOW you have no idea. Ha!